


ocean come loose

by jesspava



Category: Inception (2010), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, Heist AU, Inception AU, M/M, character death (pre canon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-07-18 03:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16109930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesspava/pseuds/jesspava
Summary: “If I jumped,” Hoseok murmurs, non-sequitur. He leans over the balcony edge, doesn’t meet Yoongi’s eye. “Would I survive?”(bts inception au)





	1. the job

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to another one of oswin's famous crossovers!
> 
> highly recommend watching the film before reading, as _inception_ is already so packed in the original version, there will be a lot of dreamshare theory that isn't discussed in depth  & u may end up being confused about certain plot points w/o the movie's background information
> 
>  **warnings:**  
>  -canon typical violence  
> -guns/weapons  
> -character death, mildly graphic  
> -suicide/suicide ideation  
> -etc

Namjoon knows this entire extraction’s going to go downhill before they even get under. Yoongi’s been reckless lately, moreso than usual, reckless in the kind of way that gets you killed, not the rugged, hard-handsome swagger he’d used to have back when it was three of them and the world at their feet.

He hasn’t quite been the same since Hoseok—  
  
Namjoon, very suddenly, itches for his totem.

He passes it off as adjusting his sleeves. His cufflinks make a reassuring noise when they glance off the table, and he doesn't have to take them off and roll them between his fingers to know they’re weighted evenly. Dream.

“—what’s the most resilient parasite?” Yoongi’s saying. Namjoon shakes himself out with a breath, focuses back in on the conversation. It doesn’t pay well to get distracted on a job, and if his sneaking suspicion about their mark is right (and he’s always right: he’s the best point man in the industry), things are going to be pretty touch and go tonight.

“What Min is trying to say—” Namjoon interrupts. 

“An idea,” Yoongi cuts off, before he can get anything else out. He leans over his plate. “Resilient, highly contagious,” he says. The shoulders of his suit stretch tight over his back, his feet very carefully placed on the floor. “A fully formed idea, once it’s taken place, is impossible to eradicate.” 

Their mark raises an eyebrow. She sits back in her chair and crosses her legs, cigarette hanging loosely between two fingers. She’s taking her time to consider, brushing hair from her face with the back of her wrist.

“So what you’re saying, Min-ssi—” Yoongi twitches at the honorific. “Is that you can get my subconscious to fight against these intrusions?”

“Yes,” he says. “You'd be able to protect yourself against even the most skilled extractors.” 

Suran takes a long drag of her cigarette, doesn’t bother holding the smoke in her mouth after. Yoongi’s face goes hazy and thin in the warping heat, graying out at the edges. “Assuming,” she says blandly. “That you are the most skilled extractor.” 

Yoongi offers a thin little smile. She’s good, even Namjoon has to admit. It’s not doing their assignment any favors, but anything’s a walk in the park compared to the Stein job they’ve just come off of, and, besides, it’s fun when they get to play a little. 

“If I’m going to help you,” Yoongi says, getting to his feet. He slots one hand neatly into his pocket. Namjoon knows better though, can read the line of his shoulders from where he’s sitting across the table. “I’ll need to know you better than anybody else— your wife, your therapist, anyone. Everyone’s got their own safe full of secrets hidden somewhere, and I’ll need to know what’s in it if I’m supposed to help you keep it safe.” 

Suran’s eyes flicker to the side, a smile teasing her lips. 

“I see,” she says.

She snubs the cigarette out on the ashtray — jade, impeccably crafted — and leaves half a mouthful of Merlot at the bottom of her wine glass. Her rings catch the light as she pushes her chair back and gets to her feet. 

“I’ll need some time to consider your proposal,” Suran says mildly, brushing hair from her face. The rest of it spilling over her shoulders. “Enjoy the rest of your evening, gentlemen.” 

Fuck.

“She knows,” Namjoon sighs, putting his face in both hands. He runs rough fingers through his hair, tugging impatiently at the roots. He looks up at Yoongi, who still hasn’t sat back down. “Yoongi, she knows.” 

“Yeah, I got that,” he says, irritated. “But she looked right at the safe when I mentioned secrets, the expansion plans are in there, I just know it.”  


_« Can you get them now?_ » Namjoon asks, switching over to Russian.  
   
_« No_ » Yoongi says. He glances at the door. « _Eyes everywhere._ »

Right when the words leave his mouth, the room starts shaking. Yoongi has to hold his glass down by the stem to keep it from tipping over. 

“What the hell’s going on up there?” Namjoon mutters. 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

LOS ANGELES  
**CALIFORNIA**  
  
Wildfire.  

Donghyuk taps his foot nervously on the carpet where he’s half-bent over Namjoon, head lolling uncomfortably in the armchair. His eyes dart to where Yoongi’s sitting by the bathtub, then back to Namjoon, then over to Suran, whose fingers are curling tighter and tighter into the bedspread. 

“Come on, come on,” Donghyuk mutters under his breath, almost throwing himself at the PASIV just to check the timers. It’s useless, he knows it’s almost down to the minute by now. “Namjoon, come on.” 

He drums his fingers against his jeans, craning his head back to look at the two of them in the bathroom again, as if they would’ve moved in the time it took him to push the curtains aside. 

The world burns under his fingertips.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

The sky’s started falling by the time they get outside. Namjoon holds delicately to the stem of his champagne flute. The ground tilts, unsteady under their feet, and some of the immaculately dressed projections turn to stare when they pass. 

“I hate these events,” Namjoon says, as they get out onto the balcony. The Seoul skyline unfolds in front of them, wind cutting through their suits as Yoongi lets his scotch glass drop down over the edge of the building. “We couldn’t have picked anywhere else?” 

“Needed a kick,” Yoongi says simply.

They’ve still got a moment before the entire dream collapses on them, and Yoongi’s trying to give Namjoon time to plan out all fourteen different scenarios that could play out from here now that Suran, except—

“What’s he doing here?” Namjoon says sharply, almost angry. He gives his champagne flute to the passing waitstaff, turning Yoongi around with two hands on his shoulders. 

In the glow of nightlife, it’s just enough to make out the red and black of a couture suit, severe at the shoulders, tight across the thighs. His hair is dark again, curled becomingly across his face as he leans an elbow on the balcony railing. Everything about the scene seems dreamy, half-realized, almost as if he’s out of place at an event like this. He doesn’t look it, though.

Shit.

“I’ll take care of it,” Yoongi grinds out, feeling the weight of his totem in the pocket of his coat. It’s childish, turning his back to Namjoon before he takes a breath to steady himself. 

“See that you do,” Namjoon says waspishly. “We’re here to work, Min.” 

Yoongi waves him off, impatient. 

The ground’s stopped shaking when he starts making his way over. Yoongi ends up close, close enough that nobody else could hear the conversation, but not so much that their shoulders brush the way they used to when Yoongi would’ve leaned into his warmth, would’ve hooked a chin over his shoulder maybe. 

“If I jumped,” Hoseok murmurs, non-sequitur. He looks over the balcony edge, doesn’t meet Yoongi’s eye. He looks so at ease, mouth set in a stupid half-smirk that Yoongi doesn't know whether or not to slap or kiss off his face. Hoseok’s fingers splay delicately over the railing, lit up in purples and blues and greens. “Would I survive?” 

Yoongi, if only to pretend, leans over to look with him. He thinks of the glass he’d dropped earlier. 

“Not this high up,” he says. 

Hoseok hums, and turns to face him with a smile. It gentles around the corners of his eyes and mouth, so achingly familiar that Yoongi has to remind himself to just— breathe. 

“Hoseok,” he asks, choked up. “What are you doing here?” 

A pause. “I thought you might be missing me.” 

Yoongi feels his chest crush. He has to look away. 

God. “I do,” he says. Hoseok has always been the one to ruin him without even trying. “I miss you every day,” he murmurs. “But I can’t trust you anymore.” 

“So?” Hoseok says, looking put-upon. “Why does that matter?” 

Yoongi doesn’t answer, and Hoseok sighs, turning to lead the two of them down a long set of stairs: a winding, glass staircase off the side of the building that has no reason to be there except because Namjoon couldn’t help himself with the design.

“Joon’s taste, yeah?” Hoseok says, amused. He trails thin fingers across the banister, city lights leaking in rainbows across crystal-blown glass. Yoongi doesn’t respond. Hoseok would know it was a dream; of course he would. The problem now is keeping him from ruining the entire extraction now that he’s showed up. 

Hoseok’s here, but Yoongi’s got a job to do, and very little time to do it in. 

“Could you watch the door?” he asks, finally, when they get down to the kitchens. Namjoon had designed this floor so that he could get back into the private rooms from here, just two hallways and a left turn before he’s back with the safe. The combination, Suran had already given them in the first level, so all Yoongi needs to do is replace the envelope before he can throw himself out the conveniently located terrace. “Please?” 

Hoseok gives him a _who, me?_ look, but settles obligingly next to him. 

Yoongi gives Hoseok his lock-picks once he’s done — no real reason to keep them on him if he can just dream up another set when he needs — and freezes when he feels cool fingers against his wrist, sliding up just under the cuffs of his shirtsleeves. 

He looks up from where he’d been on the floor, the kitchen door swinging open daftly before him. There’s a shade in Hoseok’s eyes that is accusing, almost violent, when he gives Yoongi a little smile. Hoseok had always been confident about his abilities, but he was never smug, never so self-satisfied as he is now, knowing where to press just to get a rise out of him. “Do the children miss me?” he asks, when Yoongi stares for too long. He almost drops everything he’s holding. 

“Hoseok,” he rasps. He shakes his head, forces words out of his swollen throat. “You can’t even imagine.” 

“But you can.” 

“The door,” Yoongi says, forcefully. “Could you please watch it?” 

Hoseok raises his eyebrows, rolling his eyes. But he gets to his feet and settles into parade rest. 

Yoongi doesn’t look back when he starts making his way through the corridors.

He’s breathing hard when he gets to the safe, and sweating uncomfortably in his suit, fingers steady from years of practice when he keys in the passcode and waits for the little door to swing open, pulling a cream envelope from thin air, heavy, milky cardstock, to replace the one already inside and— 

“Yoongi-ssi,” comes Suran’s voice, light across the sudden coldness of the room. Her tone is on the hard edge of playful, lips folding downward at the corners as she says, “What a pleasant surprise.” 

_Fuck._

“The gun, Min,” Hoseok says, even though he’s got his favorite Browning in one hand, and a Glock in the other, just now slipping into its holster. Hoseok’s smiling again; Yoongi doesn’t realize why for until there’s commotion behind the door and Hoseok kicks it open behind him without looking, Namjoon struggling as two guards haul him into the room, his arms pulled tight to his sides. 

The look he gives Yoongi is venomous. 

“Did he tell you?” Yoongi asks, eyes flicking back to Suran. She’s all liquid, standing there like she’s won. He doesn’t say who. 

“That you’re here to steal from me?” she asks, lids heavy. “Or that we’re actually in a dream?”

“ _The gun_ , Min,” Hoseok says again. 

He puts his Browning up to Namjoon’s temple. 

“Hoseok,” Yoongi says. “You of all people should know—" 

“I want to know the name of your employer.” 

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” 

“We all know if he dies in a dream, he just wakes up,” Hoseok says. 

Yoongi’s head is spinning, trying to focus on two conversations at the same time, the weight of the envelope in his hand — if only he could get it open and read it before the fucking kick, god fucking _dammit_ — and Namjoon glaring at him where he’s struggling, shoes sliding for purchase against polished hardwood.

“—but pain,” Hoseok’s saying. He lowers his gun so it’s pointed at Namjoon’s knee, eyes sparkling, lips curled at the corners. “Pain is in the mind.” 

“ _No_ —”

The gunshot echoes.

Namjoon screams, the sound clawed out of him.

“I want to know the name of your employer,” Suran says again, louder, over the sound of Namjoon fighting to stay conscious, blood all over the floor. He’s sweating, Yoongi can see, teeth gritted painfully as he’s yanked upright. 

“And judging by the decor,” Hoseok continues, walking a circle around Namjoon to his other side, smoothing a hand patronizingly over his cheek before he lowers his gun so that it’s pressed up against his thigh. “We’re in yours, aren’t we, Joonie?” 

“Don’t call him that,” Yoongi spits. “You don’t have the right—” 

“Oh,” Hoseok says, eyes widening prettily, “Who said I needed your permission?”

Yoongi pulls his gun down and shoots Namjoon in the head before Hoseok can get another word out of his mouth.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“What are you doing?!” Donghyuk splutters, Namjoon jerking awake. He yanks the needle from his wrist and skids over to where Suran lies, who’s already shifting over the bedspread. The PASIV whirrs as he drags out another IV line, fumbling for the med tape. “It’s too fucking early!” 

“She knows,” Namjoon says, in lieu of an explanation. “The dream’s collapsing— I’m gonna try and keep Shin under a little longer; we’re almost there.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

The ceiling caves down in spurts of rubble and dust. Lights, snapping low around their heads, chandeliers skittering to pieces by their feet. Suran snatches the envelope up from where Yoongi had left it on the table when he fled, stained by dirt and the long indent of a gun barrel down the center. 

“He was close, wasn’t he,” Hoseok says, leaning a hip against the table. He’s quietly amused, holstering his Browning before crossing his arms together. 

Suran’s hands are shaking when she tears cardstock open so she can check what’s inside: the expansion plans for the company, the new album, her artists— 

“No,” she breathes. 

All the pages are blank. 

Hoseok raises his eyebrows, surprised. 

_“Stop him!”_ she yells at her guards, hiking up her skirt to take off after them, ducking the mass of support beams and ceiling tile.

Yoongi scrambles to dodge the gunshots, reduced to crawling frantically across the floor for cover. He feels the weight of the envelope against his side, the only thing that keeps him going as he clutches onto his gun and tears his skin up as he skids across the stairs of the hotel restaurant. 

He turns around only to fire a round back, and he must hit something because the shooting pauses, long enough for him to heave himself over and rip open the envelope.

The first thing he reads is CONFIDENTIAL, Yoongi flipping each page over to try and get as much as he can about the expansion plans. There’s not much there, and he swears under his breath when he gets to the last section and half of each paragraph is blacked out in thick ink; goddammit, she must’ve _known_ they were coming, that’s everything Cobol wanted them to get out of her fucking head—

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“There’s not enough time!” Namjoon shouts, over the chaos. Whatever Los Angeles wildfire that has come to terrorize the neighborhood is chasing families out of their homes. It might just be him, but Namjoon feels like the air’s gone ten degrees hotter, and he struggles out of his jacket to yell, “The kick! Give him the kick!” 

“The what?!” 

“Fucking— _dunk him!”_

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Time comes to a standstill. The dream: steadily, abruptly quiet.

There’s a gurgle. Yoongi looks up, looks up at the skyline through the impossibly clear windows — sees Namsan Tower, LG building, sees apartment lights going out one by one. 

His grip has gone loose around the paper in his hands, and he turns his neck to the side to watch the rain pelt against the glass, brows furrowed. Confused.

The gurgle turns into a rush, into a stream. Then the ocean bursts through the walls and swallows him whole. 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Yoongi comes to and finds a gun pointed at Donghyuk’s head. 

He barely has time to make eye contact with Namjoon the second before he claws sloppily out of the bathtub and throws himself at Suran, all three of them going down hard as he gets an arm around her throat and holds it there until she stops struggling, sliding around on the bathroom floor as water crashes over the edge of the tub and soaks the fine leather of Namjoon’s loafers. 

“You had us there at the end,” Yoongi admits later, running a hand through his hair as Suran blinks back into consciousness. For a high ranking executive with such little combat experience, she’s surprisingly calm in the midst of all this. She laces fingers together over her stomach. 

Both of them are still sopping wet. 

“So my question is,” Yoongi says, when it’s clear she’s not going to talk. He leans forward in his chair, feels the lump of his totem uncomfortable in his back pocket. “Why did you even let us in at all?” 

“An audition.” 

Yoongi frowns. “For what?” he asks. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Suran shrugs, crossing her legs. “You failed.” 

“Shin,” Yoongi hisses. “I don’t think you quite understand the situation we’re in here.” 

Crackling, the smell of something burning. Yoongi’s hair suddenly bone dry. “The company who hired us isn’t going to take failure as an option.” 

“Then you should’ve tried harder.” 

Namjoon’s standing by the window, worrying his lip. His thumb slips in and out between his other fingers as he flexes his hand nervously. People starting to stream in from half a block down the street. They don’t have time left, again. 

 _Hurry it up,_ he mouths, frantic when he catches Yoongi’s eye from across the room. 

“Looks like we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way then,” Yoongi sighs, getting up to his feet and pulling his Glock from where he’s tucked it into the back of his jeans. He yanks Suran up by the expensive collar of her shirt, sends her sprawling across the hardwood. 

She slams against the dresser, bottles of perfume shattering everywhere. The last one, somehow still intact, rolls to a stop by her arms, which have come up to cover her face. Yoongi’s standing over her, gun trained to her head with these wild, terrible eyes. 

The floor shakes, heat warping pavement and house-fronts out the window. The screams are getting closer. 

“Tell us what you know!” he yells, his gun squared at her for emphasis. “Or I shoot.” 

“Min—” 

“Shut it,” Yoongi spits at Namjoon without taking his eyes off of Suran. “The expansion plans, Shin!” he presses, again. “Where’s the rest of them?” 

The room’s getting hotter. Donghyuk’s forced to shed his jacket, Namjoon’s fingers tapping against the side of his thigh, teeth gritted. 

“My ex gifted me this bottle,” Suran says quietly. She soaks her wrist with perfume before bringing her arm up to her mouth, across the thin knob of her bone. “I always hated him, you know, but sometimes you just can’t pass up good money.” 

Yoongi breaks away to look at Namjoon, confused, only to find him boring holes into Donghyuk’s person with ever-growing revulsion, the kind of horror that accompanies the realization of hiring someone who's so incompetent he can’t even get the job done. 

“Dior’s CHLOE,” Suran continues, almost dreamily. 

Yoongi’s head snaps back to her. 

“He gave this to me six months before we parted ways back in 2007,” she says.

“Min,” Namjoon says. He shakes his head. They need to get out of here before the entire thing goes sideways. “Hurry it up!” 

“This should’ve soured by now,” Suran says. “But this perfume tastes fresh out of the bottle,” she continues, sitting up slowly. “Factory reset, if you will.” 

There’s pounding at the front door. They’re on the third floor of the house, but it won’t take the projections long before they make their way up the stairs.

“Which means this isn't my perfume,” Suran says, eyes boring into Yoongi’s. “And this isn’t my home.” 

The smile she gives them is all teeth: equal parts pleased and knowing and furious. 

“So I’m still dreaming.” 

The bedroom door bursts open.

Yoongi whips his head back to look at the space Namjoon had stood, feeling like he wants to put his fist through the wall or shoot either Suran or Donghyuk in the head because goddamnit they were _so close,_ god fucking damn it; they were so close, and they still couldn’t pull off the job. 

“A dream within a dream,” Suran says, pulling herself to her feet and dusting off her slacks. “Well done, Min-ssi. So you _have_ lived up to your reputation.” 

Screaming. The hot press of bodies and flame. Everything blurs terribly around him. 

“ _Fuck,”_ Yoongi swears, feelingly, teeth grinding so hard against each other it’s a wonder nobody else can hear. He catches Donghyuk’s eye from where he’s trapped between the bed and the wall by a chorus of ash-soaked bodies. “You’re on your fucking own,” he growls, eyes narrowed dangerously. 

Yoongi fits the barrel of his gun under the soft tissue of his chin and pulls the trigger. 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Namjoon comes awake to a timer by his ear. 

“How’d it go?” Chenle asks, nervously folding his paperback over in his hands. 

“Not good,” Namjoon says, dropping down to start packing up the PASIV. Donghyuk’s line rolls back into the case when he rips the needle from his wrist, and Yoongi’s blinking himself awake half a second later. 

“Piece of shit,” Namjoon says, loud enough that Donghyuk knows it’s for him. “How could you mess up the goddamn perfume?” 

“I didn’t know she was going to drink the damn thing!” he shoots back defensively. 

Namjoon snaps the case lid shut. Hard. 

“And you—” he says, glaring. Yoongi’s already on his feet, yanking his bag out from the overhead racks. “What the hell was that?” 

He doesn’t have to clarify. They both know what he’s talking about.

Hoseok.

“It’s under control,” Yoongi says, short, zipping his jacket up with more force than necessary. He doesn’t check to see if Namjoon’s finished with the PASIV, having to clean up for four sharers on his own. They’re too experienced to be messy with it by now. 

“Yeah,” Namjoon scoffs, hoisting the case up with him when he gets to his feet. “I’d hate to see out of control,” he says. 

“I’ll see you at the hotel,” is all Yoongi says, shoving a wad of bills hard against Namjoon’s chest when he stalks past. He manages to get the compartment door open after a moment of fumbling with the lock. “Every man for himself,” he says, tossing another roll at Chenle. Then he’s gone.

None of them are stupid enough to wait around after an extraction — and a botched one at that — for someone like Suran to catch. Having Cobol on their asses is enough. Having their largest competitor there too is even more of a death wish. 

It’s only another minute before Suran’s awake, but everyone else’s thoroughly scattered by then.

Chenle flicks his eyes up to her, momentary, unassuming, and then back to his book. 

Suran lets out a breath. Then she reaches out to fold the edge of her sleeve over, smoothing her thumb over the puncture mark in her skin, lips tugging upwards with a knowing smile. 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

The thing is, Namjoon’s known Yoongi since their military days. That makes it nine years, coming up on ten, for how long they’ve been working together: most of it dreamshare, most of it dubiously legal after Hoseok had stolen a PASIV right out from under the Army’s nose without so much as batting an eyelash. 

Namjoon’s been with Yoongi through most of his rebellious, stupidly reckless phases — when theory wasn’t quite as sharp as it is now, when they’d gone two layers deep for the first time, when he’d asked Hoseok to marry him and then wouldn’t shut up about it for three months afterwards — but point is, the minute the helicopter door slides open and they find Suran sitting there, silk-gloved hands folded neatly in her lap, he already knows Yoongi’s as good as gone. 

“Your architect sold you out,” Suran says simply. “Tried to bargain with me for his own life.” 

Donghyuk’s slumped in the far seat. He looks over at them, lip split, hair matted. There’s a bruise blooming high on one of his cheekbones, and it looks like his arm’s broken from the way he cradles it against his chest. Namjoon isn’t sure what to make of it until one of Suran’s men offers him a gun, stock first. 

“That’s not how we do things around here,” he says evenly. Dreamshare taught him how to bleed even a rock back when they were both military owned, but this isn’t the kind of place to go on a killing spree, even if he’s been feeling particularly murderous lately. Namjoon watches with bland detachment as Suran’s bodyguards drag Donghyuk, limp, out the helicopter. He was never particularly attached to him anyway; alliances are bought by day over wire transfer in this business. 

“What do you want?” Yoongi asks, when Suran tells them to get comfortable. 

The side doors shut with alarming finality.

Suran looks at them. Her shirt, now changed, looks like it costs more than Namjoon’s entire suit rack. Not to mention her shoes: practical, but expensive, and the flash of diamond as she tucks hair behind one ear when the chopper takes off. 

“Inception,” she says, simply. 

Namjoon’s stomach drops. 

“Is it possible?” she asks. 

“No,” he scoffs, before anybody else can open their mouths. “Of course not.” 

“You make a living stealing ideas,” Suran sends a pointed look in Yoongi’s direction. “Is it so hard to plant one there instead?” 

Namjoon’s mouth opens, then closes. He squeezes his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tries to figure out how to put all twelve years of dream theory — painstakingly tested on him, dream theory — into a simple enough sentence for someone outside the industry to understand. 

“Okay,” he says, finally. “If I tell you not to think about elephants, what do you think about?” 

Suran’s lip curls up, a little fondly. “Elephants,” she says. 

“Right,” he nods. “But the reason it doesn’t translate in the field is because _you_ know, either consciously or unconsciously, that I was the one who put the thought in your head,” Namjoon says, leaning forward in his seat. “The subject’s mind can always trace the genesis of the idea; true inspiration is impossible to fake—”

“That’s not true,” Yoongi mutters. 

Namjoon comes up short. 

“What?” he says, turning to where Yoongi’s braced one hand against the door, staring out the window. “Min—” 

“Can you do it?” Suran asks mildly. If she wasn’t wearing three thousand dollar Chanel gloves, Namjoon thinks, she’d probably be inspecting her nails right now.

Yoongi looks back at her. For all the shit they’re in, he’s remarkably calm about the whole thing. Maybe he is dead inside after all, Hoseok’s old joke surfacing painfully for a moment.

“It depends,” Yoongi says. “If you’re giving me a choice, because I can find my own way to square things with Cobol.” 

“Then you do have a choice,” Suran replies, pulling out her phone.

The helicopter touches down.

But Suran’s not a business mogul for no reason, and watches both of them get out on the landing pad, bags in hand. “Min Yoongi,” she says, over the roar of the chopper’s engine. “How would you like to go home?” she asks. 

He freezes. “You know I can’t do that.” 

“And what about your children?” she asks. “Chin-Hae? Kyungmi?” 

“How do you—”

“You can’t fix it,” Yoongi interrupts, harsh. “No-one can.” 

Suran smiles. 

“Just like inception.”

Namjoon can see it in the way Yoongi tenses. 

“Min,” Namjoon says, voice hard. It’s a weak try to get him away from whatever Suran’s offering. She’s powerful, almost possessed with her competency. Out of all the people in the world that are coming to their doorstep with suitcases of impossible promises, Suran’s the only one that sounds like she can deliver, and she knows it too. 

“How complex is the idea?” Yoongi relents, teeth gritted as he doubles back.

“Simple enough.” 

“No idea is _simple enough_ when you have to plant it in someone’s head.” 

Suran studies him evenly. “The head of my main competitor is an old man in poor health,” she says. “He plans to pass the company onto his son, Park Jimin,” she watches Yoongi weigh his options. “I need him to decide to split up his father’s empire.”

Yoongi puts one hand to the helicopter door, like he can’t stand without something to hold him up. His hair’s soaked, and so is the rest of his coat, but there’s a hard line he’s wearing for a mouth when he says, “If I do this—” a pause. He looks down, then back at Namjoon. “If, if I even _could_ do this, I’d need collateral. How do I know you can deliver?”  

Suran raises one perfectly shaped eyebrow. Her eyes are glinting. Devious. “You don’t,” she says, smiling shark-like.

She sits back in her chair, and all Namjoon can think is: _hook, line, and sinker._

“But I can.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Paris is very old, and very beautiful.

Yoongi hates it. 

“You never did like your office,” is the first thing he says when Jun-ki looks up from where he’s been grading papers for the first time in three hours. His brother’s got dark circles smudged under his eyes, and his hair’s sticking up all on one side when he jumps, pressing a hand to his chest.

“Fucking hell,” he swears, almost knocking a stack of books over. “Hello to you too, I guess.” 

Yoongi shoves both hands into his pockets, and tips his head down. Truthfully, he’s embarrassed, but _God_ is he ever going to let that show. Part of him feel inadequate, having to pass things along through his brother to the kids, that he couldn’t even do things right when it came to fixing what Hoseok did back when he was still around.

“Can I help you with something?” Jun-ki sighs, when Yoongi’s come up to his desk and then just stands there helplessly, not really knowing how to put feelings into words. He was never good at it anyway, so he clutches the bag of gifts to his chest and tries to force his way into his brother’s head through sheer will alone. Jun-ki will make him say it though. He’s a little shit. 

“Here,” Yoongi says gruffly, half-tossing the bag onto his table. He can’t quite look him in the eye. “For the kids.” 

“Thank you,” Jun-ki says. He knows Yoongi’s clinging into everything’s he’s got left in case he wakes up one day and finds it gone. He puts the bag carefully under his desk, next to his own. “I’m sure they’ll love it.”

“Yeah, no. I should be the one thanking you,” Yoongi says, bobbing his head awkwardly. He swallows, “Listen, I—"

Jun-ki’s since gone back to writing, but looks up again when Yoongi falters, presses one hand across his face but then takes it away almost immediately after.

“I need a favor,” he says. 

Jun-ki puts his pen down, folds his hands together over the term paper he’d been grading, looking very carefully up at his brother. 

“What kind of favor?” he asks. 

Yoongi lets out a breath. 

“The kind that could bring me home.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Turns out that Jun-ki knows, quote, quite the guy. Young, impressionable, still in school for fuck’s sake, getting his third degree in architecture for no other reason except the fact that he’s probably got too much brain for his own skull to handle and has a death wish on top of it. 

“Kim Taehyung,” he says, pulling the kid out the hallways. “There’s someone here that would like to speak to you about a job opportunity.” 

Yoongi stands impassively next to his brother, sizing him up the minute he picks his way from the crowd. Taehyung’s not exactly broad, but not compact either — a solid build. His eyes are big and still youthful, even if he can’t be more than a couple years younger than Yoongi.

He’s devastatingly handsome, with a kind of face that belongs on magazines and movie screens and poster ads, not in academia with an entire doctorate on its way, but Yoongi isn’t choosy; he’s not going to deny talent when it’s practically shitting on his face.

“I need to test you on something,” he says later, leading Taehyung up to the roof. “But I can’t tell you what it’s for.” 

Yoongi digs a pen out of his front pocket and hands him a legal pad, watching Taehyung shove his glasses up his nose with the heel of his palm. 

“Draw me a maze that takes a minute to solve.” 

“What—”

“Start now.” 

Taehyung’s frowning when Yoongi calls time. 

He solves it in under twenty seconds, tears out the page. “No,” he says. He hands the pen over. “Again.” 

The next one is another bust. Yoongi’s starting to grind his teeth a little, and he thinks Taehyung can tell, can read it in how his jaw works when he tears the next sheet out, and the next, and the next. 

“Do better,” he says, when he almost shoves the pad at Taehyung’s chest. “Go.” 

There’s challenge creeping up into Taehyung’s eyes at that, and when he rolls his shoulders back, flipping the pages over until he’s found the blank pages instead of those annoying little squares, he starts with a circle: so large it takes up the entire paper. 

“That’s more like it,” Yoongi says, when he can’t quite figure out where to start. His grin is biting. Taehyung looks up at him, and meets it. 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“You’ve got most of it down,” Yoongi says, impressed. He and Taehyung are wandering the streets of New York, but also Paris and Tokyo and a touch of Seoul, all the buildings blended so well together he almost doesn’t notice until he sees a peek of Hangul over the high-rises in the distance. “The scale is amazing.” 

Taehyung flushes a little at the compliment, but he’s back to asking questions the next second. _Brain too big,_ Yoongi reminds himself. Training someone from the ground up, though, makes sure he’s loyal, and probably to a fault. Yoongi doesn’t settle for second-rate anymore. Neither does Namjoon.

“Who are the people?” Taehyung asks, following Yoongi as he starts down the street to check out the rest of the city. 

“Projections,” he says. “Faces you’ve seen before that your subconscious latches onto. When you create a dream, your subject’s mind will automatically populate it with their own.” 

“So these are…yours?” 

Yoongi nods. They take a left. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re the dreamer; all these projections belong to me,” he pauses at the crosswalk. “Can you change the layout of this intersection?” he asks, glancing over at him. 

He scoffs. “Yeah,” Taehyung says. “Course.” 

Half a second later, the road’s shifted to a roundabout, so smoothly that Yoongi almost doesn’t notice, except now they’re getting honked at in the middle of the street instead of standing on the sidewalk together. “Sorry— sorry,” Yoongi says, holding up a hand as they jog together to the other side. 

“So, as architect,” Yoongi continues, ducking into a bookshop to check how well Taehyung did with the details. “Your job is to build whatever world the assignment calls for. You have to create a complex enough maze so the projections can't catch us as quickly.” 

“Catch?” Taehyung frowns. “What do you mean?”

“The more you change things, the more the subject’s subconscious will start to realize that there’s something wrong,” Yoongi says. The people around them are looking, and Taehyung shrinks visibly under their glares, pressing closer to Yoongi’s side. “Which is why we always plan ahead before putting the dreamscape together.” 

“So they can get violent,” Taehyung asks, eyes wide. “The projections?” 

“Yes,” Yoongi says. “As soon as you start drawing attention, and keep drawing attention—” he looks up to see Taehyung folding the city over in itself, so they come up on cars driving straight upwards, to see apartments boxing them in on all sides like an intricate parody of a cube. Taehyung takes a step forward and puts a hard foot on the strip of sidewalk in front of him, the one that goes up in sharp, ninety-degree angles. The gravity shift takes. They keep on. “Uh,” he says.

“You mean like this?” Taehyung asks, pulling a bridge out of nowhere. He looks around when they get to the other side. The pavement’s empty, and the street too — save for the errant cab that goes by. “I’m not really seeing anyone here, to be honest.” 

“Just wait,” Yoongi snorts. “They get ugly fast. Nobody likes to feel someone else messing around in their head.” 

They wander around for longer, Yoongi pushing Taehyung to keep building the city outwards, see how far his levels can go on the first try. He’s just as good as Jun-ki promised, and Yoongi nods as he watches him pull doors from nowhere, what a fucking lifesaver. Taehyung, when he gets into the business proper and doesn’t die on this Suran job, is going to be a force to reckon with. 

They’re not talking much, Yoongi content to let the kid do things on his own for a while. Taehyung asks questions, he answers them, and keeps an eye on him so he doesn’t accidentally get run over by some car; he doesn’t notice the bridge across the Seine until it’s too late. 

“Wait,” Yoongi says, coming up short. He grabs Taehyung’s elbow, pulls him back the couple steps between them. Projections start cropping up out of nowhere. “I know this place.” 

“Yeah,” Taehyung says, distracted. “I walked across it every day to get to college before finally moving apartments last year.” 

He sounds so nonchalant, but Yoongi’s blinded momentarily by the sun glancing off the river-water, and— _they’d stood by that railing, knees knocking together around a laugh. Yoongi kept taking photos even though they came here every couple months for work, trading the camera for a kiss, Hoseok brushing hair back from Yoongi’s forehead, cradling his hand in one of_ —

“Never build from memories,” Yoongi chokes, frantic. “ _Never_ build your memories— Taehyung, are you even listening to me?”  

“I heard you,” he says faintly. “Why not?” 

“Because, eventually, it’s going to get harder to distinguish reality from your dreams,” he says, trying to pull Taehyung back to him when someone bumps brusquely into his shoulder, sends him stumbling two-footed to the side. “You could get lost here and never wake up.” 

“Then how am I supposed to create without something to go off of?” 

“You can pull from places you’ve been, things you’ve seen, but you only need a rough estimate of what things look like for the subconscious to be satisfied,” Yoongi says. “Taehyung, stop— _stop_. You’re going too far.” 

Yoongi grabs at his arm, but he isn’t listening anymore.

Taehyung just keeps walking and walking until he can’t: until there’s a crowd of people blocking the way and cars in the back, the roar of too many people talking at once, the two of them separated in the mess, Yoongi struggling when his projections get their hands on him, holding Taehyung down as the crowd parts, and the only thing he can do is throw himself forward with a strangled noise because it’s Hoseok coming down the street, it’s Hoseok with that knife in his hand, it’s Hoseok with his eyes flint-edged and dark and that macabre, teasing smile tugging his cheeks and Taehyung starts screaming, eyes wide with fear, palatable, realizing for the first time that this isn’t some game he’s going to win.

“Yoongi!” he screams. “Get them off of me, Yoongi, oh my God—”

“Leave him the fuck alone!”

Hoseok picks up the pace, walking sharp-heeled across the street, down the line of people parting for him like they just know he’s something special. That they’re saving Taehyung for him. 

“Hoseok, get out of here, what the fuck are you doing?!"

“ _Yoongi?!_ Yoongi please, wake me up, _wake me_ —”

The knife, eight inches long and held backhanded, swings out ruthlessly from behind Hoseok. Taehyung feels it sink, soft and well-oiled, into the heat of his chest, and the only thing he registers is the sharp burst of pain between his second and third rib, the hot wash of his blood, _his own fucking blood_ , and the hard shell of Hoseok’s eyes as he bites out a smile as Taehyung bucks and writhes and screams his throat hoarse and bloody and—

He wakes up. 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Namjoon says, pulling the needle from Taehyung’s arm as he doubles over in his chair, pressing a hand to his chest, dry-heaving and dizzy. Everything bearing down overbright, and too fast. “You’re fine, it’s okay.” 

“What the _fuck_ was that?” Taehyung demands, shaking everywhere, Yoongi already on his feet and making his way over. “Why couldn’t I fucking wake up?!"  

“There was still time left on the clock,” Namjoon explains, keeping his voice low. “You can’t wake up in a dream unless you die.” 

“I told you not to keep messing around, kid!” Yoongi spits, accusing. He runs a hand through his hair, tugging at the roots before he takes off to one of the back rooms. “Joon, he’s gonna need a totem.” 

“A— what?” 

“A totem,” Namjoon repeats, tired but trying not to let it show. “Some kind of, uh, small object like a lighter or a die…”

Yoongi’s hands are shaking when he kicks the door shut behind him and pulls out his music box, barely a sliver of a thing and missing two of the keys. He winds it up — five and a half times, then the handle catches — lets it play _Clair de lune,_ always ending a note too early to finish the chord, barely an eight count, barely anything at all. He clings to the edge of the sink until his knuckles turn white, vision graying out at the corners.

“Something only you’d be able to know the specific weight or feel of,” Namjoon continues, pulling out a set of cufflinks, rolling them around between his fingers. “So you can always check to make sure you’re actually awake.”

All the air rushes out of Yoongi’s chest as the music comes to an awkward halt.

He slumps down against the table, running a hand over his face as he squeezes his eyes shut. It’s getting worse. Hoseok, and everything; it’s getting worse. 

“I-I don’t know if you’re refusing to see what’s happening, or you just don’t want to,” Taehyung interrupts, ignoring everything Namjoon’s just told him, almost hitting him in the face where he’s crouched down next to him in the lawn chair. “But he’s got some serious issues he’s trying to bury down there, and I’m not just about to plug him into my brain, or, or— or vise versa when I’m just going to be fucking killed with a goddamn carving knife by his _incredibly_ _welcoming_ subconscious—”  

“Ah,” Namjoon says, nodding. “So you’ve met the husband.” 

“—they’re _married_?” Taehyung sputters, aghast. He pushes to his feet, legs shaking. He grabs his jacket from where it’s pooled together on the chair, shoving his arms into it as he stands. “That’s it, I’m out,” he says, delirious. “The two of you guys are on your own for this one,” he says, already his making his way to the door, pushing against the wind as he storms out. “I can’t deal with this, I’m sorry; I can’t.”

The door slams shut behind him. 

Namjoon sighs, gets to his feet. He won’t know how the training session went until later, but he starts packing up, figures it’ll be a late night doing research regardless.

He’s retying the Somancin lines when Yoongi comes back from wherever he’s been hiding out, pale as a sheet, and shaking.

“He’ll be back,” Yoongi says, eventually, sounding terribly certain. “Reality’s not going to be enough for him anymore. Not after today. I’ve never seen anyone pick it up so fast on their own.” 

Namjoon snaps the PASIV’s lid shut, the noise echoing through the warehouse. It’s petty, a little, but he’s three seconds from putting his fist through Yoongi’s face otherwise, and he figures this is a good enough compromise for both of them. 

“I need to pay Seokjin a visit,” Yoongi says, as if he's about the weather and not about putting himself into a war-zone. 

“Seokjin?” Namjoon asks, surprised and terrified all at once. The three of them had worked together before, had been the firsts to start up in the illegal extracting business, as it were, when dreamsharing had only been familiar to few in the industry, much less with experts at the wheel. Since Hoseok left, Namjoon hasn’t seen him around much at all. “He’s in Nagoya. That's Cobol's backyard.”

Yoongi puts on his coat. “It’s a necessary risk.”

“There are plenty of good thieves out there,” Namjoon says.

“We don’t just need a thief,” Yoongi sighs, rough. He’s halfway to the door. “We need a forger.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

NAGOYA  
**JAPAN**

If Yoongi didn’t know who Kim Seokjin was, he’d still be able to pick him out of the crowd without trouble. There’s something electrifying about the way he moves (not like Hoseok, who’s nothing but lean muscle and sharp-eyed wit), but with the kind of confidence that comes with knowing he’s attractive and hot and well-endowed in all sorts of ways. Rich, too, if anything comes from the cut of that suit of his. 

“You’re terribly underdressed for the occasion, Yoongi-chi,” Seokjin murmurs, sliding in at the bar next to him. It’s so smooth, the way he does it, like he’s talking to nobody in particular, somehow blending seamlessly into the whorls of light that pool in the strangest points of the room. The casino is dimly lit, expensive LED displays fading colors in and out from artfully arranged strips along the walls.

Yoongi tries not to jump. He always forgets how _good_ Seokjin is with espionage, given how he wandered into one of Hoseok’s old haunts years ago and never really found it in himself to leave.

Seokjin raises two fingers to flag down the bartender, pushing a poker chip across the counter and ordering something sweet, probably pink, then asking him in flawless Japanese to leave them the rest of the vodka, thank you. He smiles at the poor bloke too, the kind that still makes Yoongi’s knees weak if he hasn’t steeled himself first, reaching up to brush hair from his face. 

Everything about him is carefully cultivated. His delicate, winding touch. The way he leans his weight on his elbows and lets casino lights play all pretty off his profile while Yoongi nurses his beer and does his best not to stare. 

“So I hear you’re looking to put together a team,” Seokjin says blandly. 

He’s not quite the level a point man like Namjoon, Seokjin’s still a world class forger; his CV’s nothing to scoff at — notorious for making people work for what he’s given them, trading in favors others would be hard-pressed to avoid. Still, it’s surprising for things to have gotten around to him this fast. 

“How’s your handwriting?” Yoongi asks, instead. 

Seokjin smiles. “Versatile.” 

“You been on any jobs lately?” 

“Three weeks ago. Had me in four different bodies by the time it was over,” he says, tracing patterns in the condensation of his cocktail glass. “The mark didn’t suspect a thing.” 

Yoongi’s fingers roll over the countertop. If the white noise of polite, society conversation wasn’t so loud, maybe Seokjin would be able to hear nails against granite. Yoongi downs his beer. 

“And your thoughts about inception?” 

Seokjin’s pauses, drink halfway to his mouth. 

“Before you say it’s impossible—" 

“No, no,” he says. “It’s perfect possible. You’d just have to be out of your mind picking it up as an actual job.”

“So you’ve done it before?” 

Seokjin looks at him. “Yes and no,” he says. “It was with Jang and Adachi sometime last year; paid a pretty sum for it too.” 

“So what’s the no?” 

“We got everything in place,” he says. “It just didn’t take.” 

“You didn’t plant it deep enough?” 

Seokjin waffles, pulling a face. “It’s not just about depth, you know,” he says. “You have to get the idea down to the simplest version of itself in order for it to evolve naturally. The subject’s mind simply took a different path than the one we wanted,” he shrugs. “So: yes, and no.” 

Yoongi hums.

“I’m assuming you’re here about that.” 

He cracks a smile. “You know me well, hyung.” 

Seokjin sighs, leans back in his seat to and giving Yoongi his full attention. “So what’s the idea you’re trying to plant?” 

“We need the son of a major corporation to decide to dissolve his father’s empire.” 

“Okay,” Seokjin says, running a hand down his face. “Well, you could go down all sorts of paths right from the start: anti-capitalistic sentiment, competitor stance on big business, maybe political sentiment if you play your cards right, but…”

“But?” Yoongi presses. He can see Seokjin’s brain working, sees him on the edge of _committed,_ too curious to pass up the chance.

“In the end, you really have to start at the absolute basic,” he relents. 

“Which is?”

Seokjin’s cheek twitches. “The relationship with the father." 

Caught.

“Fuck. _Fine_ ,” Seokjin groans, putting his face in his hands. “Do you have a chemist?”

Yoongi shakes his head. 

“Well,” he sighs, fixing his hair. “There’s a guy here— name’s Jeongguk: tailors his own versions of the compounds.” 

“Can you take me there?” 

“As soon as you’ve lost your tail,” Seokjin says. His eyes meet Yoongi’s in the reflection of the glass. “Then we can talk.” 

Yoongi stiffens. “So, about that price on my head,” he says, thumbing at the corner of his mouth. He’s trying to play nonchalant. “Was that dead or alive?” 

“Not sure,” he says, pushing off the bar. “See if they start shooting.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

It takes two and a half hours to get to Jeongguk’s place. It takes Yoongi thirty-four minutes to lose all six of his tails, and the jacket that had been lovingly riddled with bullet holes after he’d squeezed himself through the second alleyway, only to have his poor ass pistol whipped so hard he nearly missed the car that runs his assailant over. 

“Get in,” Suran says, taking off the minute Yoongi dives headfirst into the backseat, hooking an ankle around the handle of the car door and slamming it shut behind him. The sound of bullets bouncing off the rear bumper is far more satisfying than it should be. 

“What are you doing here?” he gasps, once it feels like his lungs have started functioning properly again. Yoongi wipes sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. 

“Protecting my investment,” Suran shrugs, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror. Her outfit, as always, is impeccable, and she’s even wearing those damn gloves again as she tears down the streets like a madman. “Where to, Yoongi-ssi?”

Seokjin’s still at the bar when they make their way back: standing by the door and pretending to be invested in his iPhone, only looking up when Yoongi rolls the window down and yells his name. 

“So this is your idea of losing a tail?” Seokjin asks, getting in shotgun. 

“Different tail,” Yoongi bites out. “Great time to meet our employer, hyung.” 

Seokjin barely spares a glance at her, if only to compliment Suran on her slacks— Dolce and Gabbana, Spring/Summer 18. “Lovely to meet you, ma’am,” he says, looking vaguely windswept as he tells her to make the next left. “I’ll be your forger for the foreseeable future. We’re currently on the way to pick up a chemist— turn here, please.” 

It’s an hour of winding through backroads and alleyways before Seokjin’s finally satisfied with their anonymity, directing Suran to park between two SUV’s. He tugs his coat tighter against the wind when he gets out of the car, not even bothering to check if the two of them are following before he pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks the gate.

Jeongguk, when he answers the door, does it with a shotgun. 

Seokjin says something to him in Swahili under his breath, and the kid — Christ, he really is just a kid — flicks his eyes over Yoongi, and then Suran, who stares right back at him. It’s a long moment before he closes the door again, and there’s the familiar sound of a chain coming off the lock before Jeongguk slings his rifle across his back and lets them in. 

He lives on the fourth floor of a seemingly refurbished apartment suite: full bath, living room, kitchen, another closed door that’s just dim enough for Yoongi to make out the outline of. There are bottles arranged neatly on the walls, shelves labeled in thick ink and each jar taped in peeling swabs across the belly.

It isn’t a language that Yoongi recognizes, all of the letters closer to symbols than anything else, sworls of code that Jeongguk probably developed himself. Just one of the many ways to keep dreamsharing secrets safe as of late. 

“So I hear you’re looking for a chemist,” Jeongguk says, settling back into his chair. 

“And for someone to go into the field with us,” Yoongi adds. 

Jeongguk lets out a quick breath. Half a laugh. “Oh, I rarely do that anymore, Min.” 

“You don’t look a day over eighteen,” Yoongi squints. “You can’t have been in the business that long.” 

He shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “But I’m curious what you need me to come in for. I tend to work remote. It’s safer that way, you understand.” 

“I need you to be able to tailor a compound specific to our needs,” Yoongi says. He glances briefly at Suran, who’s settled in the armchair next to his, so plush they’ve sunk down a good three inches into the cushions already. “We can’t go off factory Somnacin, you understand.” 

Jeongguk looks at him now, curious. “Why not?” he asks. “You’re looking for…what sort of specific properties does it lack?” 

“Great depth.” 

“So a dream within a dream,” he says. “Two levels.”

Yoongi shakes his head. “Three.” 

“Not possible,” Jeongguk says. “The world would collapse with the slightest disturbance that far down.” 

“Not unless you add a sedative.” 

“A _power_ ful sedative,” he corrects.

Yoongi stares him down for a long moment, until Jeongguk caves, sighing, and pushes off his desk to roll over to the cabinet by his desk, tugging out a ring of keys and picking out the one he wants. He slots it neatly into the lock and pulls the door open. 

“How many team members?” he asks, with his head still stuck in the cabinet. 

“Five.” 

Suran stops Yoongi with a hand to his chest. “Six.” 

Jeongguk pauses, pokes his head back out. 

“Shin,” Seokjin starts. 

“The only way to know that you’ve completed the job is if I’m there with you.” 

“There’s no space for tourists on an assignment like this,” Yoongi says stiffly. 

“This time,” she says, tone brokering no room for argument. “It seems that there is.” 

“Uh, well,” Jeongguk says, if only to cut the tension between them. He sets a jar on the table. It’s mostly full, and faintly pink, the color of blood after rain. “I’d start with this one. I use it every day.” 

“What for?” Suran asks. 

Jeongguk’s already picked up another set of keys — thick, wrought-iron — and is standing before he turns, abortive, on his heel. “Perhaps,” he says, licking his lips. “You might not want to see.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“Hive-dreamers,” Jeongguk says, when the basement door eases shut behind him. There’s twenty of them, all laid out on rusting cots, attached by needle and tube at the wrists. 

“The hell,” Yoongi breathes, watching a little boy get out of a rocking chair in the far back. He can’t be more than twelve.

“Their minder,” Jeongguk introduces, blasé. “They’re only here for three or four hours a day, but,” he nods, letting the boy trot over to one of the sleepers and slap them hard across the cheek. “As you can see, the compound is incredibly stable. I’m pretty sure nothing short of an earthquake would wake them up.” 

“What are they doing here?” Suran asks, morbidly fascinated. She reaches out to touch one of the IV lines, watching the gold of Jeongguk’s Somnacin warp strangely under bare bulbs. “I mean, how long do they dream?” 

“Around thirty, forty hours every session,” Jeongguk says.

“After a while,” Yoongi says slowly, attempting to answer Suran’s first question. He’s running his thumb over the grooves of his totem, clearly on edge just from being in this room at all. “This becomes the only way you can dream,” he walks a slow circle around one of the sleepers. “Whatever world they’re in right now…that’s become their reality.” 

The little boy turns to him. “And who are you to say otherwise?” he asks.

A chill sets through the room. 

Yoongi turns away, then, tosses the bottle to Jeongguk. 

“Let’s see what you can do.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“How far up are we?” Hoseok’s asking. His voice is soft in a way that belies the fact that he’s terrified, and Yoongi’s head snaps over to look at him. He can feel his heart pounding in his throat.

Yoongi swallows. “I don’t know,” he says. He looks down, at the swaying city under their feet, heavy with sun. “I wasn’t the one who built this,” he huffs, trying to get Hoseok to smile. It works.

“Smartass,” he says, punching Yoongi on the arm. 

He still hasn’t gotten out the window yet, the slightest tremor rattling through him, once, when Yoongi offers Hoseok both his hands. He helps him out onto the ledge, and the two of them press close — shoulder to shoulder. 

It’s so vivid: the way the air cuts through their jackets, almost violent. Hoseok’s bangs are blown messy and curling over his forehead. Yoongi can feel the rush of blood through his temples. 

Most sound is lost to the wind, Yoongi glancing down when Hoseok laces their fingers hard enough to break. 

Then the whole world drops out from beneath his feet.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“Sharp no?” Jeongguk asks, when Yoongi bursts awake. 

He lurches out of the bed and onto unsteady feet, heaving for breath. It still feels like he’s falling, and he has to grab onto the nearest table so he doesn’t end up toppling over, swearing under his breath. He can’t fucking breathe.

“Everything alright?” Suran asks, watching Yoongi slam his way into another room. 

It takes him three tries to get the tap on, and he splashes his face with water, letting it soak the collar of his shirt, get down all over his pants. “I’m fine,” he gasps, to no-one in particular. “I’m fine,” he says again, fumbling for his totem. Yoongi ignores how badly his hands are shaking.

He has to wind it up five times before he makes it back outside. 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

PARIS  
**FRANCE**

When Namjoon's researching, nothing short of a bullet to the head is enough to distract him. It's a little inconvenient sometimes, but it's also one of the reasons why he’s one of the point men still in operation from dreamshare’s origin days; he maps everything out in painstaking detail, even down to the mark's porn preferences, should the job require.

He works half on autopilot and half on training, some things drilled into him from service he hasn’t been able to shake. The paranoia, for one, which is why he doesn’t realize he’s pulled his Glock out with one hand and aimed it at Taehyung’s head until he looks up from where he’s pressing down another article leaflet into his portfolio with his left when the kid squeaks, throwing both hands in the air. 

“Oh,” Namjoon says, a little dumbly. He’s…not quite sure how to react, running on nothing but fumes and too little sleep. “I, uh, Yoongi said you’d be back.” 

“Sorry,” Taehyung says, rocking awkwardly onto his heels when it’s clear Namjoon’s not going to say anything else. “I couldn’t— I tried, but I mean, I…couldn’t stay away.” 

Namjoon puts his Glock down. “Yeah, I know how you feel,” he says sympathetically. 

He closes his notebook.

Then: “Why don’t we go over some paradoxical architecture?” he asks, getting to his feet.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“Min briefed me a little about what you’d been able to do during your first session with him,” Namjoon says, leading Taehyung up a set of stairs. They’re similar to the one from the Cobol job: all glass, more pretty than functional. “Do you have any questions about the functions of a maze?” he asks. “We’ll need your theory to be really solid if you’re going to be building three levels in a dream. It’s…kind of a lot to take in at first, I know.” 

“You mentioned paradoxical structures earlier,” Taehyung says, hesitant. “What do you mean by that?” 

“Ah, great question,” Namjoon says, bobbing his head up and down. It makes him look a little like a fish, and now that Yoongi’s not around, he looks a little looser, more relaxed. It’s not that he’s dressed differently — still that tailored three-piece sort of thing — but Taehyung thinks it might be the shoulders; he’s smiling easier, too. “Idea is that you can sort of cheat architecture in dreams, create impossible loops in order to keep the projections from figuring out there’s something wrong. Or trapping them if they decide to come after you.” 

“Okay.” 

“Penrose steps, for example,” Namjoon says.

Taehyung yelps, flailing as Namjoon pulls him back from a drop that’s appeared out of nowhere. 

“It’s a little inelegant,” he shrugs, when Taehyung’s heart doesn’t feel like it’s going to burst out of his mouth and flop around pathetically on the floor. “But I’m no architect. As long as it gets the job done, I call it a day.” 

“Cool,” Taehyung says faintly. 

Namjoon gives him a sideways sort of smile. “Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ll have plenty of time to put these things together once Yoongi comes back from Japan. With the whole team I’m pretty sure we’ll have enough combined experience to make up for whatever’s lacking.” 

“You mean the fact that Min can’t build anymore,” Taehyung says. 

He watches his projections pass by, thinks of the elegant structure of Namjoon’s dreams compared to his own. Taehyung likes things a little grittier, more realistic, but Namjoon glosses over a lot of details. Everything’s hazy-pale here. 

“I don’t know if he can’t,” Namjoon says, lips thinning. “But he won’t.” 

“Why?” 

“He thinks it’s safer if he doesn’t know the layouts. I think he’s afraid he’ll end up bringing Hoseok in.” 

“His ex-husband?” 

Namjoon comes up short, turning to look at Taehyung, expression unreadable. “No, not his ex.” 

“They’re still together?” 

Namjoon’s mouth opens, then closes. He looks like he doesn’t know how to put it into words, throat working. “No,” he says gently. “No, Taehyung— Hoseok’s,” his voice breaks. He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets. “Hoseok’s dead,” he says. “Whatever you see in there’s just Yoongi’s projection of him.”  

Taehyung doesn’t know how to reply. He swallows, drops his gaze to the floor.

“Oh,” he says, feeling like the world’s biggest asshole.

Shit.

There's a long silence, Namjoon taking the two of them up through a cafe and three flights of stairs before Taehyung musters up enough courage to ask: 

“What was, um,” he falters. “What was he like in real life?” 

Namjoon pauses, blinks, looks down.

“He was lovely,” he murmurs, finally, rolling cufflinks between two fingers. He turns to the window, then, throat working. “He was very lovely.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> recommended soundtrack:  
> [dream is collapsing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imamcajBEJs)  
> [mombasa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPgPxGX6nNo)


	2. the team

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings:**  
>  -canon typical violence  
> -guns, shoot-outs  
> -severe gunshot wound, mention, non-graphic  
> -blood, mention, non-graphic  
> -death, temporary (this is, after all, inception)

The thing about having a multi-millionaire fund an impossible mission is the fact that Seokjin’s given all sorts of comforts only money can buy. It’s a welcome luxury, considering his last job was done out of a motel that probably hadn’t been renovated since the late fifties, but living accommodations aside, it’s also the reason why he’s sitting in the middle of Bang Shihyuk’s office in broad daylight, trying not to laugh while he chews some poor guy’s head off.

It’s no secret that Jimin and his father have been terrifically estranged from his childhood, and his uncle (re: godfather) had taken over both the company and the responsibility of raising him after Jimin’s mother passed, not a day before high school graduation. With Park scheduled to keel over any time now, Shihyuk’s power grows by day; the team wants to see if they can swing that suspicion the first level down.

The argument takes a turn. Park, bedridden, sweeps something off the bedside table.

Seokjin winces at the sound of shattering glass. 

Jimin, where he’d been standing at the window, turns abruptly on his heel. Now Seokjin knows, from the painstaking researched Namjoon had completed before he’d even been recruited for this job, that the kid’s got some kind of dance background. It’s a point of contention between both Parks, soured with age, and Seokjin can see it under the lean cut of Jimin’s suit, a little bit bratty with the single button and the solid colors.

Corded, angry grace. Annoyance, fear, guilt. 

Jimin’s got a pretty face — big lips and sloe-eyed glares — but no face is too pretty to keep Seokjin from doing his job. 

“Jimin,” Shihyuk’s saying, low so the others can’t hear. Seokjin can read lips though, he'd be a pisspoor thief to just stop at one trick and call it a day. “We need to talk about power of attorney—”

Jimin shakes his head and brushes him aside, going over to his father’s bed to pick up the frame from where it’s landed glass-down on the tile instead. “I put this out for him, you know,” he says, ignoring him completely. “He didn’t even notice.” 

The sigh that Shihyuk lets out speaks for itself.

Jimin bristles when Shihyuk puts a hand on his shoulder, but otherwise doesn’t move to shake him off, just stands there with the frame in his hands and stares down at it for a long time, ignoring the way Park snuffles and heaves with breath, and the nurse has to dial up something on the headboard when he won’t quiet down on his own.

_Interesting,_ Seokjin thinks, pushing his glasses further up his nose. He snaps his notebook shut with when Shihyuk returns to the study.

Today has been good. Seokjin’s been working feverishly on his forge in front of a mirror all week meanwhile, training Shihyuk’s mannerisms into his own body: the pain in his left hip that’s been bothering him for a while, the way he talks with only one side of his mouth, how he fixes his pocket squares.

“It’s a very delicate art,” Seokjin smiles, later, at a round-table. “To be impersonating Shihyuk on the first level down. We can start suggesting concepts to Jimin’s conscious mind so when we get a level deeper, his own projection of him should feed that right back to him.” 

“So he'll give himself the idea,” Namjoon says, leaning back in his chair. “Wow, hyung, that’s genius.” 

Seokjin quirks a smile at him. “That’s the only way it’s gonna stick,” he says. “Has to feel like part of an organic process.” 

“Great,” Yoongi says, scribbling something down on his clipboard. “The next problem we’ve got to tackle is how to translate a business strategy,” he gets to his feet, points to their whiteboard where Seokjin’s scribbled **I WILL BREAK UP MY FATHER’S EMPIRE** across the middle. Bold, in black Expo marker. “Into a tangible emotion.” 

“Can we get him to think that dissolving the company’s sort of a last “fuck you” to the old man?” Taehyung asks, tapping the end of his pencil against his cheek. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be associated with his father anymore.”

“I’m not a fan of that angle,” Jeongguk says, brows furrowed. 

“Yeah, neither am I,” Yoongi agrees. “In my experience, positive emotions always stick better than the negative ones. I think we should play it safer in this operation where we can, no offense.” 

Taehyung hums, nodding, as he puts something down in his notes. “Yeah, okay,” he says, scratching his forehead. He’s quiet for a moment with the rest of them. “Then what about, um,” he says. “What about ‘my father wants me to create for myself and not just follow in his footsteps’?” 

Seokjin nods. “That could work,” he says, looking over at Yoongi.

“So we destroy his one good relationship in exchange for what?” Namjoon asks.

“For repairing the one he’s got with his father,” Yoongi shrugs.

“I think we should run with it,” Seokjin says, tapping his pen against his thigh. “Let’s go under, yeah?”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Buildings, falling into place as Taehyung pieces the labyrinth of New York City together. He puts a Prets on one corner and gets rid of the cabs, claiming they’re an eyesore; truthfully, it’s because Namjoon died the minute he’d showed up in the dream, having cropped up in the middle of the street on 23rd by accident and gotten himself run over. 

He wasn’t very happy when he’d plugged back in afterwards. 

Taehyung offers him a guilty smile when he does.

“—on the top level, we open up his relationship with his father,” Seokjin’s saying, when they go back to paying attention to him. “Get him to say, _I will not follow in his footsteps_ ,” he squints up at the high-rises. _“_ Then the next level down we feed him _I will make something for myself,_ and then…” he paces a tight circle around himself, thinking. “By the time we get down to the bottom level we can bring out the big guns—” 

“My father doesn’t want me to be him,” Jeongguk finishes.

Seokjin turns to him, nods. “Exactly,” he says. 

“We can correspond each level for who we need Jimin to bring,” Taehyung says. 

“City’s the first, right?” Jeongguk says, trying not to sound too giddy about the whole set-up. “I’m doing that one.” 

“Yeah,” Yoongi says, patting him on the back. “Good work.”

It feels like military days, except the team's different, younger. Hoseok's not here. They fall into each other again like it doesn’t matter that he's gone: Seokjin putting coffee on the end of Yoongi's table when he sweeps into meetings, bullying Namjoon to bed, the three of them going out for drinks to bitch about the job but somehow ending up at the doorstep of bad memories instead. Reminders of how long it's been since they first started in the business.

Still, it doesn’t mean they don’t fight at all. Taehyung, usually the one to stay the latest on their odd days off, ends up hearing the insults they hurl at each other from across the warehouse. He doesn’t know enough about what happened to truly understand, but  _you've been a fucking coward since the beginning, I still have no idea what he saw in you_  is meant to cut, and he knows it, looking up from where he’s welding the last piece of his totem together to watch Namjoon storm out, his jacket slung tight over his elbow. 

“Were you gonna go under by yourself?” Taehyung asks, when he sees Yoongi fiddling with the PASIV. 

He looks up from where he’s uncoiling a length of tubing, and Taehyung swears he sees a flash of guilt cross his face, but it’s gone just as quickly, Yoongi schooling his expression into his usual indifference. “No, no,” he says. “I was just, uh, running some experiments. Namjoon didn’t get to finish them before he…” he grimaces. “You know.”

“It’s fine,” Taehyung says. “Seemed like he was real angry though.” 

Yoongi shoves his hands into his pockets. “Sorry, didn’t realize you were still here.” 

“I was just finishing up my totem,” Taehyung replies, holding up the earring so it glints off the single fluorescent in the corner of Jeongguk’s lab. It’s a pretty thing: blue and silver, long enough for him to spin the wheel he’d put into the center, but not bad if he needs to fight with it on.

Yoongi’s face softens. “Here,” he says, holding a hand out. “Let me see?”

“Ah,” Taehyung exclaims, pulling his arm back like he’s been burnt. 

There’s a smile this time. “So you’re learning,” he says, gently. 

“Yeah, actually,” Taehyung says, “That reminds me. I had a question about one of the mazes, but I forgot to ask Namjoon while he was still here earlier. Let me just—”

“Don’t,” Yoongi says, putting a hand to his elbow when he goes to pull one of the 3D prints off the top shelves. “Don’t show me specifics.” 

“Why not?”

“In case any of us accidentally bring our projections in, it’s better if only the dreamer knows the layout.”

Taehyung looks at Yoongi, considering. “You mean in case you bring Hoseok into the dream,” he says, as honestly as he can. He knows he’s hit home when Yoongi starts fidgeting, shifting books aside and shuffling pens around on the desk he’s closest to. “Namjoon told me he passed away,” Taehyung tries catching his eye. “I’m sorry.” 

Yoongi’s face pinches, pained. He doesn’t say anything. 

“You can’t keep him out, though, can you?” he says. “Because if _you_ know the maze, then so does Hoseok,” he folds his arms over his chest. “He’d sabotage the whole operation.” 

“Yeah,” he says tightly.

“Min,” Taehyung sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Do the others know?” 

“No.”

“You’ve got to warn them if this is getting worse.” 

Yoongi finally looks at him, sharp, haunted. “Nobody said it’s getting worse,” he says, almost shouldering past Taehyung until he snaps an arm out and grabs his elbow to keep him from running off. “Listen,” he says, after the silence stretches a beat too long, breathing hard through his mouth. “I just need to get back to my family, okay? That’s all I care about right now.” 

“So why can’t you go home?” Taehyung asks, and the question coming out raw, disquieted.

Something flickers in Yoongi’s eyes. His tongue darts out to wet his lips.

The space between them stretches for miles. 

“Because,” he stumbles for the truth. “Because they think I killed him.”

Taehyung feels like someone’s just punched him in the gut. His hand drops from where he’d been holding onto Yoongi’s wrist. He stares at him dumbly, stares and stares and stares, a buzzing in his ears that won’t go away.

He snaps back into himself when Yoongi says, “Thank you,” almost sardonic in its delivery.

Taehyung flushes, half-angry.

“For what?” 

Yoongi brushes past him. “For not asking whether I did.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

(“In order to keep all three dream levels stable, I’ve added a sedative to the mix,” Jeongguk explains. “The dreamer’s inner ear function remains unimpaired, meaning you can feel any sort of falling sensation, so kicks shouldn’t be a problem.

“Both fortunately and unfortunately for us,” he continues. “This compound amplifies dream time by almost two-thousand percent. Ten hours in real life gives us a week the first level down,” he says. “Six months the second level down, and on the third level —"

“That’s ten years,” Taehyung says, the words spilling out his mouth before he has time to stop them. He looks up from where he’s been playing with his fingers in his lap, horrified. “Who would want to be stuck in a dream for ten years?”

Jeongguk’s expression is pitying.

“Depends on the dream,” he shrugs.)

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Taehyung wakes up in an elevator. 

He'd been run ragged all week, just about to head back to the hotel with the others and order enough room service to feed a cow until he'd passed their meager excuse of a lab and stopped, brows pinching together. Yoongi had been in there alone, thin limbs arranged neatly in a lawn chair, hooked up to a PASIV. Dreaming.

“The hell,” Taehyung whispered, coming up slow to the desk.

He'd pulled Jeongguk’s chair over to sit for a while, not exactly sure what he was waiting for. If Yoongi woke up and found him staring, he’d only try to avoid whatever confrontation came after, and Taehyung, to be completely honest, had been tired of trying to beat sense into Yoongi’s thick skull day in and day out.

So he did the only thing that made sense to do. He unrolled out an IV line after checking the Somnacin draw. Taehyung could insert the needle in his sleep now, could pick up the familiar sinking of his veins. He closed his eyes.

Fifth floor. Sixth floor. Eighth.

The elevator comes to a shuddering halt.

Taehyung squints at the light that comes in through the grate for a long moment. It’s a while before his eyes adjust to the heat of sunset: small town, brick and mortar, nothing but green and trees on either end. It almost looks too pretty to be real, but dreams are dreams after all, not quite bound to the confines of reality; Taehyung’s not sure if this somewhere he’s been before. 

“Do you remember this?” someone murmurs, the sound almost lost to the wind. 

Taehyung turns, heart hammering in his chest. He puts a hand to his ear, feels the weight of his totem shudder with the jerk and halt of the lift. His fingers goes to his wrist, even though he’s been under countless times already, too familiar with the PASIV by half. Nothing can happen to him here. All he’ll have to do is dream up a gun and then he’s gone.

He pushes at the grate. 

It slides easily to the side, and he steps through onto the grass. He has to search, for a minute, to see who’s talking. The wind blows hair into his eyes, and he reaches up to push his bangs off his forehead when he sees Yoongi — back to Taehyung. 

He’s sitting at an angle, enough to that he can see that he’s with someone else, legs curled underneath himself, their hands tangled almost desperately together. They aren't looking at Yoongi though, keeps tucking their chin down to avoid meeting his eye. 

“Hope-ah,” Yoongi tries. His voice is thinner than Taehyung’s ever heard it before. Vulnerable. “Please,” he tries again, reaching out to cup his cheek. 

Hoseok shakes his head.

“Don’t you remember—”

Taehyung swallows a scream when his head snaps up in his direction.

He's stumbling backwards, landing on his ass when Yoongi turns to look too, expression going from confused to scared to downright fucking furious when he sees Taehyung, storming over to where he’s frozen in the grass to shove him back in the elevator, slamming the grill shut.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Yoongi spits, fist against the _door close_ button.

The lift groans, then starts moving again. 

“I just wanted to see what kind of “tests” you were doing all night,” Taehyung scoffs. First, breaking Yoongi goes around own damn rules about never going under alone, and then he’s out here talking to Hoseok like his husband doesn’t love showing up in the middle of an operation to ruin the entire thing.

“This has nothing to do with you.” 

“It has _everything_ to do with me,” Taehyung scoffs, disbelieving. “You may have the others fooled into thinking you’ve got this under control, but they have no idea what sort of risk they’ve taken going down there with you.”

Yoongi doesn’t say anything. The elevator comes to a stop, and Taehyung can see the curving outline of Big Sur’s cliffs, the light breaking in streaks through the clouds. The world here is unbelievably clear, and Taehyung finds himself wondering just how good of an architect he used to be if this is him building off-mission.

Hoseok’s sitting on the hood of a car. He’s got a blanket pulled up around his shoulders, but he’s laughing, leaning back against the windshield as he turns his head to look at them. He says something, then, probably to Yoongi, who stiffens next to Taehyung. 

It’s too loud to hear what it is — between the crash of the surf and the cars going by — but Yoongi’s hand curls into a fist against his thigh, trying to tear his eyes away from Hoseok. He can’t. Taehyung aches for him.

“Why do you do this to yourself?” he asks.

Hoseok’s beautiful when he smiles. He’s one of those people whose face looks right with it, easy, and he says something again, trying to wave them over. Yoongi, forgetting himself, takes half a step onto the beach. His foot skids out onto the rocks. He stops.

“It’s the only way I can still dream.” 

Taehyung’s brows pinch. “What?” he says.

The gulls cry overhead. Hoseok buries a little deeper into his blanket. 

“And in my dreams we’re still together,” Yoongi says. 

Then, as if he’s suddenly remembered there’s something wrong, he steps back inside the elevator, slams the cage shut. 

Fourth floor, third floor. Taehyung sees a winter porch, the summer sun. He hears the sound of Paris beginning to wake, of Shanghai at night, the quiet bustle of a famers market in Barcelona. Daylight shifts in ribbons through the lattice of the grate.

“These aren’t just dreams,” Taehyung realizes, half-turned to Yoongi, half-turned to the doors. “These are memories,” he says. “You said never to build from memories, I remember that. You’re trying to keep him, what, trapped down here so he’ll never die?”

Yoongi closes his eyes. “You don’t understand,” he says. He sounds broken. Too old for his bones. “Memories, yeah,” the image of a house within a house, pale sheets, clothes hung up to dry. “But they're also moments I regret, things from my past that I need…that I _need_ to fix.” 

Second floor.

“What’s here?” Taehyung asks, pointing to the B.

Yoongi yanks his hand away so fast it hurts. “No, Taehyung,” he says, and doesn’t elaborate. 

First floor. 

The elevator comes to a stop in the doorway of an open kitchen-living room plan. The place is homey, with warm hardwood and a little pink backsplash behind the stove, dinky photos hung up precariously around the room. There’s a piano against the wall that opens up into sliding doors, glass, tipped out right over a sprawling field just past the elevated porch. Taehyung squints when he gets out after Yoongi, the skylight spearing late-noon across his eyes and cheek.

“This is your home?” he asks, when Yoongi puts a trembling hand down on the kitchen island. The counter’s rough-hewn in granite, and there’s a stack of bills by the sink. More official looking documents spilling from a manila folder. A woman in a suit, in glasses, sitting delicately on the edge of a bar stool. 

“Mine and Hoseok’s, yeah,” Yoongi says, distracted.

Taehyung’s eyebrows go up. He looks around, sees nobody but them. “Where is he?”

“He’s already dead.” 

“You’re going to have to do something about the kids,” the woman says. Yoongi, who’s been looking at the photos on the mantlepiece, turns to her with teed-off shoulders. “I assume you want to pay some form of child support.” 

Taehyung sees two children on the porch. A girl with dark hair is reading something, curled up against the arm of a lovechair, her brother’s asleep against her shoulder, and drooling. 

Yoongi steps closer to the woman, as if possessed. “It’s now or never, Min,” she says, pressing a thin envelope to his chest. “You have to leave if you want to have a chance at making sure you can provide for them.” 

“That’s Chin-Hae,” Yoongi murmurs. He cranes his neck to look at the kids. Taehyung follows. “The other one is Kyungmi,” he says. “They’re not ours, but,” he looks down to the wedding band. “I have to keep them safe.”

Kyungmi turns the page. Chin-Hae laughs.

“I always think about calling out to them, so they’d turn,” Yoongi says. “And I could see their faces again before I have to go.” 

He looks at the plane ticket in his hand.

Taehyung starts backing up slowly. Puts a shaking hand on the wall so he can put one foot behind the other without looking away from Yoongi, and the woman he’s now talking feverishly to.

“But there’s never any time.”

Taehyung’s almost back at the elevator now. His hand glances off the metal framework, and he winces, but Yoongi doesn’t notice. He’s too far gone.

“So all I know is that I have to come home,” he says. “I have to go back to reality if I want to see them again. If I want to be able to tell them—”

Taehyung slams the cage shut. He hits the BASEMENT button, watches Yoongi jerk as he turns on his heel and sees what he’s doing, watches him sprint down the hallway trying to catch Taehyung before he disappears down another floor, but it’s too late. 

The quiet of the Min house fades right into a hotel suite. Night-time. The sound of compressed, panicked breathing. 

Taehyung’s heart stops when he gets out of the elevator and sees Hoseok leaning hard against the far wall, an arm hooked painfully tight around a woman’s neck. They’re pressed front to back, and her face is red with tears. She’s begging. Hoseok’s face is nothing but cold anger, just like the Hoseok he’d met for the first time on a bridge across the Seine. 

He has a gun pressed against her ribs. 

“Noona, noona,” Hoseok’s saying, almost crooning the words. “It’s okay, Yoongi’s gonna come soon. Don’t be scared. I’m just gonna wake us up, I promise.” 

Taehyung takes another step. The furniture in the room’s been overturned, vases smashed. He steps on a broken champagne flute, and two pairs of eyes snap to him. Taehyung’s lungs turn to stone. He can’t breathe. 

“Don’t move,” Hoseok says, low. “You’re coming with us.” 

“Please,” Jiwoo gasps, shaking. “Hoseok, there’s something wrong with you,” she says. “Who’s going to take care of Kyungmi if you do this, huh?” she asks. Taehyung heart drops to the floor of his stomach. “Chin-hae _needs_ _someone_.” 

“This isn’t real,” Hoseok says, teeth bitten. “If we die in a dream, we just wake up in real life, you have to trust me on this.”

Then Hoseok suddenly swings the gun wide, pointed at Taehyung’s head. “What are you doing?” he asks. “Get the fuck over here.” 

“Hope-ah, just put the gun down,” Yoongi says from behind Taehyung. 

He nearly collapses with relief.

“No,” Hoseok says, voice shaking. His aim, remarkably, remains steady. “We’ve done enough talking, Yoongi.”

He puts the gun to Jiwoo’s temple. 

“Even if I don’t shoot you,” he says. “It won’t matter. They’ll catch you eventually.” 

“Sweetheart, listen to what you’re saying—”

“I filed a letter with our attorney,” Hoseok continues, ignoring the way Jiwoo shudders against him. “I said that I was fearful for my safety. That you threatened to kill me, and sometimes I believed the only way to survive was to end my own life before you had the chance to.”

“No,” Taehyung chokes out. Yoongi grabs his wrist, shakes his head. 

“I love you, Yoongi,” Hoseok says, wretched. Anguished. “I’ve freed you from the guilt of choosing to leave them. We can go home now, you know. Our real home.” 

Yoongi’s has to lean on the back of the couch for support. “But this is our home,” he whispers, wet. 

Hoseok pulls the trigger. 

The gunshot is deafening, but the sound of Jiwoo’s body dropping to the floor is even louder. 

“ _Hoseok!_ ” Yoongi screams, breaking out into a run when he fits the barrel of his Walther under his chin. Hoseok's crying, big eyes red-rimmed as he sidesteps onto the windowsill, nothing to stop him from falling except one hand on the frame.

“Don’t move,” he says, voice shaking something fierce. “Or I jump.”

Yoongi falls to his knees next to Jiwoo’s body, turning her over and cradling her head in his arms, brushing hair from her face before he looks back up at Hoseok again. The look on his face is grieving, pained. Taehyung has to look away. 

“There’s someone who’s waiting for me,” Hoseok murmurs, the words almost blowing away with him out the window.

“No,” Yoongi gasps, crawling forward on hands and knees, tracking blood everywhere. “No, you can’t do this—” 

Hoseok closes his eyes and keeps talking like there’s nobody there. 

“Dark hair,” he continues. “His pretty smile.” 

“Please— please, just. _Listen to me!_ ” 

“I see him in my dreams.”

“Stop, oh God, don’t do this, baby—”

“And I’ll see him again soon.” 

“ _Sweetheart, please_ —” 

A shot goes off. 

Hoseok’s fingers, where it’d been curled around the window-frame, peel loose by ones.

His hair is a heavy thing over his forehead, covering his eyes as he tips backwards out the open window. It feels like Taehyung’s watching in slow motion as Hoseok falls: the trail of blood that follows, the way his chin drops to chis chest.

“Hoseok, _oh my God,_ Jesus fucking _Christ,_ ” Yoongi screams, scrambling over to the window. “Why—”

Taehyung’s hands are pressed against his mouth, he backs up until he hits the elevator, feeling something tight curl together in his stomach.

“Noona, noona,” someone croons. 

Taehyung’s head snaps to the side. He screams.

Where Jiwoo’s body had been before, is nothing but pristine carpet. Hoseok’s shoved up against the wall again, with his gun pressed to her chest, and he doesn’t notice that Yoongi’s pushed him back into the elevator until Hoseok breaks from the loop and rushes, screaming, in their direction. 

“You promised!” Hoseok pounds like an animal against the grill, shaking the entire lift. “You promised we’d be together!”

“You _trapped_ him down here?” Taehyung accuses, horrified. “ _How?”_ he asks. “How could you do that?”

“Come back here!” Hoseok screams, even as Yoongi presses the button for the fifth floor.

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi says, ignoring Taehyung. “It’s just after this job, sweetheart, I promise—”

_“You said we’d grow old together!”_

“You think you can just build a prison of memories to lock him in?” Taehyung asks, getting closer to yelling with every word. “You think that’s going to keep him contained?” 

“Taehyung—”

“What the fuck was that?” he demands. He slams the emergency stop button. The elevator jerks to a halt. It’s dark outside the cage. “Yoongi, I swear to God—”

“The reason I know inception’s possible is because _I did it to him first, alright?_ ” he yells, the words bursting from him in one breath.

_ "What?" _

Yoongi lets out a hard breath. He looks at everywhere but Taehyung.

“Back when dreamshare had just started, we were both working for the government. Hoseok was some kind of engineer for the NSA; Namjoon and I were doing tours in Afghanistan.” 

Yoongi puts a hand to his forehead, pacing the short length from wall to wall, restless. “Originally it had been used to simulate extreme combat situations, or used to teach us how to bleed someone until we got what we wanted from them,” he says. “Far from the kind of stuff we’re used to seeing now.”

Taehyung stares.

“Then, of course, Hoseok and I stole a PASIV from right under the government’s nose,” he says. “He liked to joke that he’d stolen me too, and then Namjoon, so,” he licks his lips. “We started experimenting. When extraction started solidifying into theory, we still wanted to go deeper— _I_ still wanted to go deeper,” he swallows. “I kept pushing. Neither of us realized how easy it was to get lost down there, how hours could turn into weeks, how days could turn into decades.”

“How long…?” 

Yoongi finally looks at Taehyung. His eyes are raw: happy, sad, tired, hurt. He swallows. “Something like fifty years.” 

“God,” Taehyung chokes out. He covers his mouth with both hands. “How could you stand it?”

“It wasn’t so bad at first,” he laughs, bitter. “Of course, I knew it wasn’t real, but somewhere along the way, Hoseok had chosen to forget,” he shoves hands into his pockets. “He’d chosen to forget our real lives, locked his totem somewhere deep in his mind.” 

All of it starts falling into place, then. Inception. The conversation in the hotel room. Yoongi’s guilt. 

“I knew we couldn’t keep living like this,” Yoongi continues. “So I planted an idea in his head,” he rasps, voice nothing but a whisper now. “One, very small idea—” 

“No.” 

“That his world wasn’t real.” 

He sucks in a hard breath.

“But I didn’t realize that once we woke up again, that little idea would’ve grown to shape his entire world,” he says. “That the only way for Hoseok to truly come back to reality was to kill himself.” 

“Min…”

“He had himself declared sane by three different psychiatrists,” he says. “I would’ve been put in jail for the rest of my life, but I had to look after his sister’s kids. I had to— I had to run, I couldn’t just leave them like their father did. Not after Jiwoo died too.”

“You mean?” 

“Both their parents were gone,” Yoongi shakes his head. “Hoseok and I would’ve raised the two of them like our own, but." He opens his mouth to say something else, but decides against. He shoves his hands into his pockets, jaw clenched. " It’s the reason Namjoon and I fight so much.” 

Taehyung’s taken aback. 

“Namjoon and Hoseok had run in the same circles,” Yoongi explains. “They were always closer, I don’t really know why, but it’s hard to talk about. Between us, it’s.”

“You haven’t told him why Hoseok died yet, have you.” 

Yoongi stares very resolutely ahead. “No,” he admits, after a very long silence. “No, I haven’t.” 

“Does anyone else know then?” Taehyung asks, disbelieving. “You’re going to bring all of this with you into Jimin’s head?” 

Yoongi’s hand clenches into a fist by his side.

“Seokjin knows,” he says. 

“How much?”

“Not about inception.”

“What about the memories, then?” Taehyung asks, gesturing to the elevator. “What about— what about all this?” 

_“He knows.”_

“Min, if you’re lying to me—”

“I’m not,” Yoongi snaps, hitting the button for the top floor. “I swear he does, okay?”

A long silence. The clacking of gears and chain. Then, so quiet that Taehyung mistakes it for the riptide on the way up.

“He was the one who helped me build it in the first place.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

L.A.X. → INCHEON  
TERMINAL 2  
** LOS ANGELES **

Jimin has a bit of an image, all things considered: a shrewd businessman, too pretty for this business, cold with a face to cut it.

“Excuse me,” he says, from where he’s crowded in behind Seokjin. Jeongguk’s trapped Jimin between the seats and their bags, so it’s an easy thing to liberate him of his passport when he brushes past.

Taehyung looks up from where he’s buckling his seatbelt. He can’t possibly see more than Yoongi’s elbow where he’s sitting, but he death glares at the pressed line of his suit until it feels like his eyeballs are going to fall out of his head. Seokjin gives him a passing squeeze on the shoulder, and gets himself in place, closing his eyes until he hears the sound of the seatbelt sign going off. 

“Hey, um,” Yoongi says, leaning forward in his seat. “I think you dropped this?”

Yoongi holds the passport out gingerly. Clearly he’s not privy to getting his fingernails ripped out one by one, but Jimin only looks confused as he opens it up to check if it’s his. “Oh,” he says quietly. His eyes are sloped downward with eyeshadow. “Thank you. I’m— I don’t know how that happened.” 

Yoongi smiles; he's quite charming when he wants to be. Seokjin thinks it’s the reason why Hoseok married him in the first place, but he can’t speak about that without _really_ wanting to get his fingernails ripped out one by one. “It’s okay,” he says. “Hey, I just wanted to ask,” Yoongi murmurs, purposely keeping his voice low. “If you’re Park Jimin?” 

Jimin's expression goes carefully shuttered, then. He slips his passport into his pocket. “Yes, that would be me,” he says. 

Suran looks up from her book in the corner. 

“I heard about your father,” Yoongi pulls a sympathetic face. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

Jimin makes a noise that’s something between a scoff and a hum, and looks away. He calls for water as the flight attendant passes by. “Nothing to apologize for,” he mutters.

Namjoon shoots Seokjin a look where he’s sitting across the cabin. _Man,_ it reads. _This is so fucked up._ Seokjin rolls his eyes, fond, and shakes his head. Things are panning out to play perfectly into their hands.

Yoongi clears his throat, reaching over to tip half a mil of sedative into Jimin’s water before hands the glass over to him. “To your father then,” he says, feigning sympathy. “May he rest in peace.” 

Jimin doesn’t say much, doesn’t even look at Yoongi, but he downs half the cup in one go. “Thank you,” he replies.

He’s out cold in the next minute and a half.

“We’re clear,” Namjoon says, when he drops a bag in Jimin’s lap and fails to shake him awake. The flight attendant shuts the curtains with military precision, sliding a PASIV out of the galley and tossing it to Jeongguk.

The team works through a half silence, lines like a pale, yellowing spiderweb.

“Team?” Namjoon says sharply, double checking with the attendant as she kneels to his level, finger hovering over the center console. 

“Check,” Jeongguk says, downing another mouthful of champagne. He turns to Taehyung, a little nervous, then Seokjin. Yoongi expressly avoids looking at him, or really anyone in general. His hand closes around itself where it rests against his thigh. Again and again and again.

“Check,” Taehyung murmurs, nodding at him.

Namjoon’s back in his seat. “Alright,” he says. He looks at the flight attendant. “Let’s go.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

NEW YORK CITY  
**NEW YORK**

As chemist, Jeongguk wasn’t lying when he’d told Yoongi he rarely went into the field. This is one of the first, and easily the most dangerous, jobs he's ever joined — one where he isn't reduced to sliding vials of Somnacin across his desk in exchange for a truly obscene amount of cash.

Showing up on 44th, though, and getting rained on so hard he can feel the non-existent bruises starting to form under his suit, he’s sullenly reminded of why he's always hated going under so much. He could probably change his outfit if he tried hard enough, conjure up an umbrella, but he’s nowhere near Taehyung’s skill level. Not even close to the old-school dream team he’s working with. So he doesn’t bother. 

Yoongi pulls up in a car, almost slipping against the curb, and Jeongguk has to pinch himself a little (still) when he presses into the backseat next to Namjoon and takes the piss jokes without much complaint. 

“He’ll be looking for a cab in this weather, at least,” Seokjin says. 

Yoongi crashes his car into one barely half a minute later. 

“Get out,” Yoongi says, rolling the window down enough to point a gun at the driver — who’s just appeared, wet and angry — letting Seokjin swing into the front seat and pull smoothly out of the intersection without even waiting for Suran to buckle herself in. 

They make it approximately half a block before they see Jimin standing on the curb, soaked to the skin. He’s on the phone with someone, but hangs up when he sees them, sliding breathlessly into the backseat with his briefcase caught between his feet on the way down. 

“To Market street,” he says, fumbling with his jacket. Prada. As much as Seokjin hates to love the guy, he’s got a terrific fashion sense on top of it. 

He’s about to pull away when he spots Namjoon in the rearview: Namjoon who’s looking every inch a businessman the way he started getting into the habit of after Hoseok died, Namjoon who slots himself in next to Jimin in a tumble of leg and not much else. 

“Hey— what the hell,” Jimin stutters, cheeks flushed as Seokjin starts off down the street.

“Sorry, I thought it was empty,” Namjoon grins. Cheeky. 

“Well, it’s not,” Jimin says coldly, then signals to Seokjin. “Sir, can we stop and—”

Suran pulls out her gun. Turns in her chair and clicks the safety off as Jimin’s face twists into a sour, resigned sigh. 

They only make it a block before the side window shatters. 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

(The street, cracking open out of nowhere, splits and heaves like the spine of a sea-monster. 

Yoongi slams the breaks, and Taehyung bites down around a scream, jerking hard against his seatbelt. His heart pounds, palms sweaty where they slip up against the wheel.

Yoongi stares, uncomprehending, at the whole twenty-four stories of skyscrapers under them — it was never part of the design, not Taehyung’s anyway — but he  swears he can hear the rip and curl of the wind, can feel Hoseok’s hand in his, can taste the words—  _how far up are we?)_

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“Fuck— _cover him!_ ” Seokjin yells, one hand on the back of Suran’s seat as he reverses, hard. It’s a mess out there: rain so heavy everything blurs through the glass, the sound of squealing tires and gunfire. He doesn’t know who’s shooting, but Seokjin’s been in this business long enough to know how to _drive_. 

“What the hell’s going on?” Suran yells, quick to put a gun in her hand and roll the window down until it shatters outward with a passing bullet. She’s firing off round after round — must be filling the chamber so she doesn’t have to manually reload — and Seokjin thanks God now that his employer is fucking insane, hanging half out the door just to shoot someone in the face.

“ _Shit_ —” Namjoon swears, shoving a rucksack over Jimin’s head and pushing him down between the seats. He’s small, and Namjoon forces his head between his arms before yelling at him to stay there. 

He pulls up a semi-automatic, then tells his dream body to shut the fuck up about the recoil. 

Seokjin’s a beast behind the wheel, throwing the car in a terrible parody of a three-point until he’s got no choice except to back up hard into some SUV, letting Namjoon take poor pot shots at whoever’s in the driver’s seat and the completely unnecessary projection with a fucking— _machine gun_ , the hell.

“You've got to be kidding me,” Namjoon says tightly, shaking wet hair out of his eyes as the rear windowgoes up in shards of glass. He aims wildly as Seokjin jerks the whole car with a squeal of tires and books them the hell out of there. 

They’re chased, of course, chased like stone cold motherfuckers on their tail until Seokjin manages to lose two by rushing through an active intersection with a trucker coming in from the left. 

“Are you okay?” he yells, when Yoongi tumbles in from nowhere with a van, of all things, and sends the last SUV sprawling into the dirt. Namjoon doesn’t know where it ends up, but he doesn’t care, too busy trying to fit his heart back into his chest where it’s crawled up to his throat. “ _Joon?_ ”

“I’m fine, I’m fine!” he says, tucking his Browning into his waistband and hauling Jimin back onto the seat even though he’s still struggling to get his bearings. “Minnie’s fine, you’re fine, Shin’s fine—”

Seokjin reaches over and pulls back the sleek piece of Suran’s jacket.

“Shin?” Namjoon asks again, holding Jimin down by the shoulder with one hand and pushing to his feet at the same time.

Suran looks over at him with her skin sallow and sweating. She moves her fingers where they’d been pressed up to the bloody patch of shirt.

Chest wound.

Fuck.

Before he has time to do anything, Yoongi’s pulled open the warehouse doors and Seokjin speeds through, cursing under his breath in creative, angry bursts as he leaves Suran on her side of the car.

“Holy shit,” Yoongi breathes, when Seokjin pulls her out of the seat and into his arms. She jerks, coughing. “Is she hurt, oh my God— is she okay?”

“Yes and no,” Namjoon says, distracted, when it’s clear the others are busy occupied with an armful of CEO. “What happened back there? Where were you?” 

“Almost drove off a twenty story building.”

Namjoon turns to Taehyung, confused. “Why’d you put that in the middle of the city?” 

“I didn’t!” he sputters. “It— it wasn’t part of the design.”

“Min,” Namjoon hisses, rounding up on him. “I swear to fucking God—”

“Okay, well then I’ve got a question for you, yeah?” Yoongi explodes, shoving Namjoon up against the side of the car as soon as he sees Jeongguk carrying her up to one of the rooms. Taehyung slides out on wet shoes next to Seokjin. “How the hell were we ambushed, Namjoon? Those weren’t regular projections; they’ve been trained for fuck’s sake!”

Namjoon’s really gotten too good at dealing with Yoongi straight up _losing_ it after Hoseok jumped. 

“You’re right—” he says, interrupting him as smoothly as he can.

“Trained?” Taehyung asks, horrified. “How can they be trained?”

“He’s fucking _militarized_ , and you didn’t bother to tell us before we came down here?” 

Namjoon turns to him, puts his back to Yoongi even though he knows Yoongi would love to tear his head off over nothing right now. “Jimin’s had an extractor come and, and teach his subconscious to defend itself. It should’ve shown in the research, I’m sorry—”

“So why the hell didn’t it?”

“Calm down,” he murmurs, as quietly as he can manage.

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Yoongi shouts, getting up in his face about it. “You’re working point, _you_ were supposed to check his background thoroughly, _you_ were supposed to make sure something like this didn’t happen,” he jabs a finger to Namjoon’s chest, reeking of rainwater and sweat. “We aren’t equipped to deal with this kind of violence, and now Shin’s got a _bullet_ in her chest—” 

Namjoon breathes in hard through his teeth. “We’ve dealt with this kind of sub-security before, Min,” he says, as evenly as he can manage. “We’ll just have to be more careful; it’s not like we can’t handle this.”

“Well Taehyung isn’t!” Yoongi snarls. “I promised Jun-ki that I would bring him back in one fucking piece, and the fact you couldn’t find out the simple fucking fact that Park Jimin was fucking militarized.”

“Min.”

“This wasn’t part of the plan!” he snarls, pointing at Suran’s blood on the staircase. “She’s _dying!_ ” 

“Okay,” Seokjin interrupts, pulling out a gun. “So I’ll just put her out of her misery, and it’ll be over with.”

“ _No—_ ” Yoongi grabs his arm, twisting his wrist and trying to get him to drop the Walther.

“She’s in _agony_ ,” Seokjin says, yanking his hand away. “It’s a fucking chest wound, you idiot, what the fuck else am I going to do? We’ll just leave her topside, it’s not a big fucking deal—”

“It won’t wake her up,” he yells, so loud that Taehyung actually stumbles back with the force of it.

“What do you mean _‘it won’t wake her up’?_ ”

Yoongi doesn’t answer this one, choosing instead to do that thing he loves where he presses his mouth together and works his throat and looks away instead of actually saying the thing that he was supposed to tell everyone ages ago because he knows it’ll end badly and would rather risk it later on instead of biting the bullet and doing it when he should. 

“We won’t wake up,” Jeongguk says, wiping his hands down on a towel and he comes down from the top of the stairs. “Because we’re too heavily sedated to leave the dream that way.”

And here’s the thing. Seokjin is rarely ever angry. He’s always professional, always on top of things, always in control of how he looks and acts and generally _exists_ , as sort of of fuck you to all the people less competent than he is. But now, now when he turns to Yoongi from where he’d been looking at Jeongguk, the sheer disbelief in his expression would’ve made Namjoon want to document this moment in photos if he could actually find any part of this situation funny. 

“Min, what happens when one of us dies?” Seokjin says, voice low, furious.

Yoongi doesn’t say anything. Seokjin takes a step closer. He repeats his question.

“What happens when one of us dies?” he asks again.

Yoongi’s jaw tenses, loosens, tenses again. “You drop into limbo,” he relents, finally mustering up the gall to look Seokjin in the eye.

“ _Limbo_?” Taehyung asks. 

“Unconstructed dreamspace,” Namjoon says. “Nothing but raw, infinite subconscious, and whatever was left behind from anyone in the team that might’ve been trapped down there before,” he says, getting angrier with every word. “Which means _Min_ , in this case.” 

“How long would we be stuck there?” 

“Well, you couldn’t even think about trying to escape before the timer’s up—”

“How long?” Taehyung presses. 

“Years, decades?” Jeongguk stutters. “I— I don’t know, it could be infinite! Why don’t you ask him; he’s the one who’s been there before!” 

Taehyung turns to him, paling, mouth hanging open. “Hoseok?” he chokes out. Namjoon’s head snaps to Yoongi, then to him, then back to Yoongi. “All this time and you never fucking told me?”

Yoongi’s silent, breathing hard through his mouth.

“Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t just lead us into a warzone with no way out,” Seokjin says coldly. “I’m not sure how loyal you think I am, but I’ve got your kids to watch out for too, Min Yoongi; I’m sitting it out on this level.” 

He shakes his head. “You can't,” Yoongi says. “With a ten hour flight, you’d be down here for a week. Jimin’s subconscious would have slaughtered you by then,” he turns to Seokjin, face set. “The only way forward is downward.”

Silence.

Nobody knows what else to do except stare until Seokjin tilts his face down with a laugh, and turns on his heel. He brushes past Yoongi so hard he almost topples over.

“Thank you for that,” he says. He shoves his hands into his pocket, somehow still looking dignified while he stalks off, presumably to check up on Suran.

“Only three levels deep,” Seokjin mocks bitterly, disappearing into the gloom. “Just don’t die.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Jeongguk handcuffs Jimin to a pipe. Then he pulls the bag off his head.

“I’m ensured against kidnapping for up to ten million dollars,” is the first thing he says. Jimin doesn’t even look ruffled, just annoyed that he’s ruining Dior on the floor of a musty warehouse that’s definitely seen better days. There’s even water damage on fucking cement. “So we can make this very simple, and I’ll just be on my way.” 

“That’s not what we’re here for,” Namjoon says.

Jimin looks at him, unimpressed. 

“Your father’s got a personal safe in his office,” Jeongguk says, filling in the script just like they’d practiced topside. “We need the combination.”

Jimin, now, is starting to look a little green around the edges. “There’s no safe,” he says.

“Doesn’t mean you don’t know the password.” 

He presses his lips together. Color is starting to come into his cheeks, furious. “There’s no safe,” he repeats. “So I don’t know the password.” 

“We have it on good authority that you do,” Namjoon says, tilting his head to the side. 

“Who’s authority?” 

(Taehyung’s rifling through Jimin’s wallet — the one that Seokjin had stolen earlier in the cab.

“Anything inside?” Seokjin asks, when he’s finished drying his hair. He’s changed now, because it’s a dream and he’s not going to stand wet socks if he’s got the choice, and he makes his way across the room, exhausted from his fight with Yoongi earlier. 

“Um, like eight hundred,” Taehyung shrugs, rifling through all the sleeves. “Credit cards, debit…oh.” 

Seokjin looks up from where he’d been adjusting his shirt-sleeves. “Something wrong?”

Taehyung’s looking at a photo. It’s creased in one corner, and yellowed with age, of Jimin and his father, his mother crouched next to him in what looks to be a dressing room. Jimin’s in a sparkly costume, and he’s a little blurry, but the strangest part about it is that everyone’s smiling. Happy smiling. Real smiling. It’s the saddest thing he’s seen all day.

“Seokjin,” Yoongi says, coming up out of nowhere.

Seokjin tucks the photo into his pocket. He looks up at Yoongi, eyebrows raised. 

“You’re on,” he says. “You’ve got an hour.”

“An hour?” Seokjin frowns. “I was supposed to have all night to break him.” 

“Yeah, well,” Yoongi shrugs. He glances over to where Suran lies on a table, shivering. “Shin wasn’t supposed to get shot in the chest, so I suppose we don’t all get what we want, do we?” 

“Jesus,” Taehyung mutters under his breath. “Sound more bitter about it, won’t you?” he asks, crossing his arms. 

But as much as Seokjin’s annoyed at Yoongi, he can’t hate him. Not completely. “It’s fine,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

Stress, in general, isn’t very good for dreamshare, but stress, in general, is the only pervasive, inescapable constant of the job. He lets out a breath, feels his forge build from the ground up, settling just right on his shoulders. 

He knows he’s done it when Taehyung whistles, low and impressed, Jeongguk doing a double take when he gets upstairs after Namjoon and slips the balaclava off his head to leave his hair sticking up in little points.

“Best of the best, huh,” Namjoon grins, even if it’s a small thing. He looks at Taehyung, raises his eyebrows. “Watch and learn, kid,” he says, eyes on Shihyuk.)

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“They’ve had at me for two days,” Seokjin says. Namjoon’s shoved him to the floor, and handcuffed him to the sink, and he lets Shihyuk’s head thunk back against the wall. “They want access to that safe, says I know the combination, but I don’t—”

“Yeah, well, neither do I,” Jimin sighs.

Seokjin’s eyebrows pull together. He looks at Jimin, confused. “Your father told me that when he died, only you’d be able to open it.” 

“I’d remember him giving me a combination,” he says. “Trust me.” 

“What about a date, then,” Shihyuk says. “Something meaningful? A birthday or—”

Jimin gives Shihyuk a bitter smile. “We didn’t have a lot of _meaningful_ experiences together, samchon,” he says. “You of all people know that the most.” 

“He loved you, Jimin,” Shihyuk tries. “In his own way.” 

“Sure,” he says bitterly. Jimin swallows hard, and looks at nothing — straight ahead. His hand flexes and curls together where it’s handcuffed against the pipe, and he shakes hair out of his eyes. The set of his jaw is tense. “You know, he called me to his side at the end.” 

Shihyuk makes a quiet noise. 

“He could barely speak, but he still took the time to say one last thing to me,” Jimin laughs, breathy, awful. “And you know what that was, samchon?” 

“Jimin—”

“He pulled me close…and I could only make out one word.” 

The tap drips, from where it’s sitting above Seokjin’s head. He’s hung onto Jimin’s last confessions, the few things he’d admit to anyone at all — feeling the rush of a good job flooding his veins. _Adrenaline junkie,_ he thinks to himself.

Jimin licks his lips. His throat works. 

Seokjin watches the first tear slip out from under Jimin’s lashes.

“ _Disa_ ppointed.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Yoongi knew Namjoon would chew him out about limbo. He knew. They’ve been a gasket waiting to blow ever since he refused to explain how Hoseok ended up as a mess on the sidewalk, but he didn’t think Seokjin would join him too, until he thought about it a little more and realized that, yeah, he would. 

Taehyung’s got his back turned to Yoongi when he clatters up the stairs as quietly as he can manage, hovering by Suran’s feet as he alternates look-out and checking to see if she’s worse. 

“How’s she doing?” he asks softly. 

It’s testament to how quickly Taehyung’s picked all this up when he doesn’t jump, just turns to look at Yoongi over his shoulder. He puts a hand on Suran’s ankle, rubs his thumb into the sliver of skin right where the tongue of her boot ends. “She's in a lot of pain.” 

Yoongi comes around the table, crouches down so she can look him in the eye without having to turn her head any further. “When we get down to the next level, it’ll get less intense.” 

Suran nods, flicking a smile up at him, brief.

“And if she dies?” Taehyung asks. 

Yoongi swallows. 

“Then she’ll drop out of the dream,” he murmurs.

“Trapped in limbo for a lifetime."

Suran reaches for him.

“I will still,” she wheezes. “Honor —  our arrangement.” 

Yoongi looks at her sadly. “Thank you," he says. "But you couldn't. You won’t even remember we had an arrangement when you wake up. Limbo will have become your reality by then."

“And I'll be an old woman,” she murmurs. “Filled with regret.” 

“Waiting to die alone, yes.” 

Blood leaks from the corner of Suran’s mouth. 

“Then I’ll follow you down,” she says. “And we will be young again. Together.”

Yoongi, at some point, has started holding her hand. He strokes his thumb across the bloodied skin of her wrist, watches her. “I’m not sure— I’m going to be very honest with you,” he says, even though he know it sounds terribly juvenile, but it’s the only thing he can offer her now. He makes a noise, vague. Rough. “I can’t promise you anything."

Suran gazes steadily back. “I know,” she says. “But I will.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

The next time Jeongguk and Namjoon go back to the basement, they bring a gun. Or, well, they show Jimin the gun by leveling it point blank at his face and threatening to blow his head off if he doesn’t give them a combination. 

He rattles out something random, shaking and halfway to stupefied. _061313_ , is what he says.

Jeongguk holds the phone up to his ear in blind imitation of a call. He gives it a moment, then he shakes his head. “You’re gonna have to do better than that,” he bites out. He turns to Namjoon, says: “Bag ‘em.”

Namjoon makes him watch as he shoves a rucksack over Shihyuk’s head, then lets Jeongguk take care of Jimin next, unlocking the cuffs just long enough to get him to his feet and push him up a flight of stairs. Yoongi’s waiting by the van, doors open. 

By the time he’s got Jimin sedated, Taehyung comes down, carrying Suran, staring at the blood pooling under her shirt with terrifying intensity. 

“Jesus fuck,” is the first thing Seokjin says, ripping the bag off his head. Taehyung’s busy arranging Shin in the back of the van, tucking a blanket around her legs as she lists lifelessly to one side. “That boy’s relationship with his father is even worse than we imagined.”

“And this helps us how?” Taehyung asks, voice muffled from where he’s climbing out into the warehouse.

“The stronger the animosity, the greater the catharsis,” Seokjin says, distracted, over his shoulder. He and Namjoon both, pulling up semis. “We need to get going. The projections are closing in.”

He pulls open one of the side doors, enough to get a good sightline, firing off a round without pause until some of the shooting stops. Namjoon blows up a water tower, grabbing the PASIV and sliding into the van as he snaps the case open with practiced ease.

“So how are we going to deal with his security?” he asks, Jeongguk driving out into the rain. “It’s gonna get worse as we go further down.” 

“I think we should run with Mr. Charles,” Yoongi says, ripping a new needle open.

“Mr. Charles?” Namjoon says, incredulous. “Absolutely not.” 

The van serves. 

“Who’s Mr. Charles?” Jeongguk asks.

“A _bad idea,_ that’s what.” 

“As soon as we get down to the hotel, Jimin’s security’s going to be all over us,” Yoongi says. “We run with Mr. Charles like we did on the Stein job—”

“So you’ve done it before, then?” Seokjin asks. Almost politely, if you consider the situation they’re in.

“Yeah, and it _didn’t work_ ,” Namjoon grinds his teeth together. “The subject realized he was dreaming and his subconscious tore us to shreds.”

“We need some kind of distraction,” Yoongi says, ignoring absolutely everything Namjoon’s been saying for the past minute and a half. 

“Oh, don’t worry,” Seokjin says airily, over Namjoon’s indignant sputtering. “I’ve got just the girl in mind.” 

Yoongi slips a needle into his wrist.

Then: “You listen to me,” Yoongi says, leaning forward to curl a hand around the back of Jeongguk’s seat. “Drive carefully, okay? Everything down there’s going to be unstable as hell.” 

“And don’t jump too soon,” Namjoon adds, reaching belatedly for his seatbelt. “We only got one shot at that kick we have to make.” 

Jeongguk’s eyes flick to the rearview mirror, to the PASIV lying open like an invitation on the center console between him and shotgun, then to Namjoon’s. He nods.

“I’ll play the music to let you know it’s coming,” he says. He makes a sharp turn, veering through the maze. “Ready?”

Taehyung’s already got his eyes closed. He grips his knee, tense. 

“Ready,” Yoongi says. 

“Good luck,” Jeongguk says. He presses the button, hears the hiss of the lines going active. “See you—”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“Am I boring you?” Seokjin murmurs, dressed up in a slip of nothing.

Jimin, where he’d been staring blankly at the drinks lining the hotel bar, startles. He blinks and turns to Seokjin who, of course, looks nothing like Seokjin, just a pretty girl with dark lashes, a dark dress.

Of course Jimin isn’t interested; he’s gay, but it’s not like Seokjin’s going to act like he knows when he’s having so much fun in this body. It’s been ages since he’s been able to fuck around during a job this dangerous.

“Sorry,” Jimin murmurs, shaking his head. He coughs, lightly, to clear his throat. “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.” 

Seokjin lets out an uninterested hum. He draws a finger across the condensation on his cocktail glass, then pushes out of his barstool the minute he sees Yoongi come up behind him, hand outstretched. 

“Park Jimin, right?” Yoongi asks. The kid raises his eyebrows, turns his gaze down to Seokjin again. “Jung from marketing— ah. You don’t remember…?” 

Jimin doesn’t say anything, choosing to finish his drink off in one go instead. 

“And you are?” 

Seokjin smiles, bored. “Leaving,” she says, getting to his feet. The girl he’s wearing is short, but she’s got heels on, so it’s easy to lean in and snatch Jimin’s wallet from him again. “In case you’re bored,” she murmurs, sliding a napkin across the counter before she slinks away.

“Must’ve blown you off,” Yoongi says, hand in his pocket. “Unless, that is, her phone number is really just six digits.” 

Jimin looks up at him, surprised.

“I,” he stutters, when he focuses in on the napkin where Seokjin’s scrawled a 061-313 across the center in red pen, blinking hard.

“And what a funny way to make a first impression,” Yoongi continues, sipping at his drink. “Stealing your wallet like that.” 

Jimin’s hand flies to his breast pocket, and comes up empty.

“Shit,” he swears, running a hand through his hair. “That was worth—”

“Five hundred dollars, don’t worry, I’ve got my men on it already.” 

That makes Jimin pause, and he finally looks up at Yoongi, mouth open like he wants to say something, but not sure what. “I’m sorry,” he frowns, shaking his head as if to clear it. “I— who did you say you were again?” 

“Jung, from marketing,” Yoongi murmurs, sliding into the closest barstool. He leans over the counter, eyes flicking to the projections across the room, their heads turning sporadically in his direction. “But that’s not really true is it?”

“What?”

“You know me, Jimin,” he presses. “My name’s Mr. Charles, and I’m in charge of your security down here.” 

Jimin blinks. “You’re with the hotel?” 

Yoongi grinds his teeth together, but only very quietly. “No,” he says. Takes a breath, tries again. “I deal with a very specific kind of security,” he says, squinting a little. He’d tried it once before, back when Hoseok was still alive, and he’d come out of the dream spitting laughter. Jimin isn’t laughing now, so he keeps going. “ _Subconscious_ security.”

Jimin licks his lips. “You’re talking about dreams?” he asks, trying to play it off cool. “You’re talking about, um, you’re talking about extraction?” 

Yoongi nods. That’s more like it. “That’s right,” he says. “I’m here to protect you.”

A glass shatters. Yoongi freezes, looks over— 

(The sound of stepping on a champagne flute, fourth anniversary, Hoseok pressed up against the wall with his arm hooked around Jiwoo’s throat and the click of a gun’s safety coming off, the gentle croon of _noona, noona,_ the breeze coming in through the window, flooding the hotel room, the carpets, the overturned furniture and the shattered vases—)

Projections turn to stare, the gentle roll of conversation dropping off abruptly into complete silence. 

Jimin looks up at Yoongi, mouth pulling into a thin line. Yoongi sucks in a breath, curls his hand so hard around Hoseok’s totem that he swears he’s going to break skin if he doesn’t let go. 

“I’m here to protect you,” Yoongi tries again.

The patrons turn back to their conversations.

He lets out a breath, sliding his fingers a little closer to Jimin’s wrist. “In case anybody tries to break into your mind and access your secrets. You’re not,” he murmurs. “Safe here. They’re coming for you.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“Who, and what is Mr. Charles?” Taehyung asks, absolutely rigid where he’s sitting next to Namjoon on the lobby ottoman. He’s watching the projections watch them with visible unease. “And why are they all looking at us?” 

“It’s why are they all looking at me,” Namjoon corrects. He crosses his legs elegantly, folds his hands up in his lap, scanning the crowd. “Mr. Charles is a gambit designed to turn a subject against their own subconscious, but it involves telling said subject that they’re dreaming. Difficult balance to get right, usually backfires spectacularly in my face, so we don’t use it often.” 

“Yoongi’s trying it now?”

“Yes,” he says. “That’s why the projections getting suspicious. They’re trying to find the dreamer, so in this case—”

“You.” 

Namjoon hums, nodding. 

The building shakes.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“Miss Shin,” a pretty girl purrs, pushing Suran back into the elevator as she’s just about to leave. Suran startles, mouth opening around words that weren’t leaving her throat, head jerking to the side when the doors slide shut. The girl slips a hand a little too low to be professional.

“Uh,” she flushes. “I’m not sure…?”

She spots Seokjin’s reflection in a reflection, then.

“Get off me,” she groans, shoving him back once he’s dropped the forge.

“You’re looking perkier,” he laughs, rubbing at his nose.

Seokjin pulls the wallet he’d stolen from Jimin out of his suit pocket, flipping through it with practiced ease before he slides the photo out of one of the pockets, about to hand it over to Suran to double check when the entire elevator shudders, jerking with seasick motion.

She looks up at the rattling ceiling, worried. “Turbulence on the plane?” she asks. 

Seokjin shakes his head. “No,” he frowns. “It feels a lot closer than that.” 

The lights flicker, just enough.

“Jeongguk’s driving.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Someone shoots out the windows of the van. He doesn’t have the eyes, time, or ability to spare a glance behind him. Jeongguk’s caught in an alleyway, one of the side mirrors run to bits and pieces as he swerves against the side wall. 

The limp bodies of the rest of the team slide around in the back seats, rain hitting their cheeks, soaking their clothes. 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“Strange weather, isn’t it,” Yoongi says, getting to his feet, pleased when Jimin’s eyes follow. He points to the bar glass, stained with streaks of water, smattering like blood off a freshly opened jugular. The whole bar shakes, tumblers chattering nervously against the wood and marble, tables and chairs unhinged. 

The scotch in Jimin’s glass tilts sideways, a forty-degree incline.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Taehyung clutches hard to the edge of the leather seat. “What’s happening?” he asks, when the lobby shifts under their feet. The projections are starting to look hostile now, one woman pulling out her phone and wielding it like a gun as she stalks past. “What’s going on?” 

“Min’s drawing attention to the strangeness of the dream,” Namjoon murmurs, trying to keep him calm. “They’re just focusing on me, don’t worry.” 

Taehyung grabs his hand. “Kiss me,” he says.

“What?”

“Distraction,” he says. “Kiss me.” 

Namjoon finally turns to look at him, conflicted, but there must be something in Taehyung’s eye that convinces him lean in anyway, let a hand come up soft against his cheek and tilt his head to the side so their lips slot together.

It’s a sweet thing, all things considered. 

Namjoon pulls away first.

“They’re still looking,” he murmurs, punching Taehyung in the arm.

“Yeah,” he sighs, trying very hard not to look put out about it. “It was worth a shot.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

“You’ve actually been trained for this kind of situation,” Yoongi asks, glancing overhead. Jimin follows. “Pay attention to the strangeness of the weather, the shift of gravity.”

Shuddering glass.

“I need you to recognize that none of this is real,” he says. “You’re in a dream.” 

Absolute silence. 

Every person in the bar turns to look at Yoongi with dead-glazed eyes, with that eerie twist of the neck that makes them look more like automatons than anything even believably human. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Yoongi hushes, watching the way Jimin’s throat works with every swallow, aborted, shallow movements that come with his choked-up breath. “I’m here to help you.” 

“You think someone’s here to— to extract from me?” 

“Yes,” he replies. The shaking gets more violent. “But I’m going to keep you safe; you just have to trust me.”

Jimin stares at him with wide eyes, wet. He’s terrified, can barely get a word out for a long time, long enough that Yoongi’s afraid the projections will start attacking, but then he opens his mouth and stutters, “You’re not real.”

Everyone goes back to their conversation. Yoongi lets out a breath, sinks back in his chair with a nod. 

“That’s right, Jimin,” he murmurs. “I’m just a projection of your subconscious.”

A man slides into the stool behind Yoongi.

“Okay,” Jimin chokes out. “Okay,” he eyes flick to the projection behind Yoongi’s shoulder. “Can you get me out of here?” 

“Yes,” he breathes. “Follow me.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

ROOM 313  
**TOKYO, JAPAN**

Jimin watches as Namjoon pulls a PASIV out from the en-suite bathroom and hands it over to Yoongi. 

“Do you know what this is?” Yoongi says, hefting the case up to eye-level.

“I— I, I think so,” he stutters, watching Namjoon crack open the case and set it down on the bedspread. “Why is it here…?” 

“They were trying to put you under.” 

“But I’m already under.”

“No, under _again_ ,” he says. “A dream within a dream,” he sucks his lip between his teeth. “Listen, this is important. Do you remember what they were interrogating you for in the warehouse? What they were trying to extract?”

“They…” Jimin say faintly, pressing his hand up to his forehead. “They wanted something— a code?” he looks up, stumbling back a step. “They said my father had a safe, but I just said something random, I had no idea—”

Namjoon shushes him, abrupt, puts a hand out in front of Jimin and backs him up. “There’s someone coming.”

There’s the unmistakable sound of a keycard slotting in through the lock. The handle turns.

“Shihyuk?” Jimin asks a moment later, horrified, disbelief caught in this throat. “What are you doing here?” he asks. Silence. Then: “Is this your room?”

“You said you were kidnapped together?” Yoongi asks, moving up to press the muzzle of his Glock against Shihyuk’s temple.

Jimin swallows, blinking back against the tears. “N-not exactly,” he stutters. “They already had him before they got me, I. He said they’d been torturing him for information.”

“And you saw them doing it?” 

He shakes his head, his hand clutched to his chest. Jimin’s breaking. He fucking devastated, standing there with kid-big eyes, breath coming quick. “Samchon?” he says weakly. His cheeks blotchy with color. “You were— the kidnappers were working for you?” 

The projection’s face crumples. “Jimin…”

“You were trying to get that safe open?” he cuts off. “Why?”

Shihyuk sighs. If he could scrub a hand down his face right now, he probably would. “Listen, I know how this looks.”

“Why were you trying to get that safe open?” he presses.

There’s a long silence. “There’s an alternate will in there,” Shihyuk admits reluctantly. 

Jimin shakes his head. “Not possible.” 

“It’s the truth,” Shihyuk says. “I’m sorry. I…can’t let you have it.”

“Why?” he says, confused.

“It would’ve ruined everything I’ve worked my entire life for by dividing up the corporation—”

Jimin laughs, mocking. “You think I’d just throw away my inheritance?” he asks. “I’m not _stupid_.” 

“I couldn’t take the chance of letting you rise to your father’s last taunt.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“That will,” he mutters. “I’m sorry, Jimin, but that will, it’s. It’s his final insult. A challenge for you to build something for yourself, telling you that you aren’t worthy of his achievements.” 

Jimin swallows. “That he was,” he closes his eyes. Tries again. “That he was disappointed in me,” he says numbly. 

Shihyuk sighs.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps. “I know you’d build something greater than he ever could, even out of the ashes of Park-Morrow, but I couldn’t risk it.” 

Yoongi looks between Shihyuk and Jimin, the latter with his head bowed, his double-breasted suit and his expensive shoes, his hair curled loose and tumbling over his forehead. His eyes are red from where he’s been scrubbing at them with the back of his hand. 

After a long minute, Jimin turns to Yoongi, his jaw set. 

“I don’t think he’s telling the truth,” he says.

Yoongi’s eyebrows go up. “I don’t either.” 

Jimin looks to the PASIV, spread open on the bed, the timers already set. “You know how to use this, right?” he asks, looking back at Yoongi.

He nods.

“Then I want to get into his head.” 

Yoongi’s eyes widen.

“Mr. Charles?” Jimin asks, somehow noticing the shift in his expression. “Is that not…?” 

“No,” Yoongi shakes his head. He’s already rolling up his sleeves. 

He grins at Jimin, all teeth. 

“This is perfect.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

The team goes down without complaint.

Namjoon’s ruthlessly efficient with the lines, knocking Jimin out first and laying him gently on the bed. He doesn’t have to, but he fixes Yoongi’s IV too, then goes to kneel next to Seokjin on the floor. 

“Don’t get your head shot off,” Seokjin murmurs, pulling at his suit. “Projections are gonna be swarming.” 

Namjoon smiles, all dimples. “And I’ll lead them on a merry chase.” 

“Just be back before the kick.”

Namjoon raises an eyebrow, pats Seokjin on the shoulder. “Go to sleep, hyung,” he says. 

He gets up, heads back to the PASIV.

Yoongi, where he’s on the floor next to the bed, looks up from where he’s fixing his needle to find the window open, curtains twisting.

“How high up are we?” Hoseok asks quietly. 

Yoongi can hear the shuffle of his feet next to his on the balcony ledge. The light is yellow, then white, absolutely blinding, and he stares down into the abyss beneath his body and the curtains snap back, and then they’re in the hotel suite, fourth anniversary, Hoseok’s pressed up against the far wall with his arm around Jiwoo’s neck and he’s crooning slow, like a love song: _noona, noona_ — the sound of glass crunching underfoot, the broken porcelain, the vases—

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

TITLIS, BERNESE ALPS  
**SWITZERLAND**

The world comes into slow focus through the scope of Yoongi’s sniper rifle. Everything blinding white. 

“What do you see?” Taehyung’s voice filters in through the down of his jacket. He sounds warbled and half-realized at first, until the dream solidifies around Yoongi and he blinks hard around his lashes. “What’s down there?” 

Yoongi pulls himself up from where he’s been lying on his stomach. A fortress, he wants to say. The fucking Alps, too much goddamn snow. Instead: “Hopefully,” he says. “The truth we want Jimin to learn.” 

“No,” Taehyung shakes his head. “I mean, what’s down there for you?” 

Seokjin’s convenient entrance saves Yoongi from having to reply. He’s got a snowboard strapped to one foot, and he curves elegantly to a stop next to Taehyung, Jimin and Suran just following. She’s looking better down here, more color in her cheeks, hair poking out from underneath her helmet. 

Yoongi pulls Seokjin aside, needing to escape Taehyung’s judgement for a minute. “I need you to pull Jimin’s security away from the complex.” 

“Who’s going to guide him in?” he asks, eyes flicking to where Jimin’s shivering in his big coat.

Taehyung looks over at them. “I designed the thing—”

“No,” Yoongi cuts off, harsh. “You’re with me.” 

“Both of us, then?” 

Yoongi shakes his head. “If I know the route…we could be compromised,” he says.

Suran looks over at them. “I could do it,” she shrugs.

“It’ll have to be the North Tower,” Seokjin says, making his way back to her side.

“The most heavily fortified part of the building,” Taehyung murmurs. “You sure you’re up for this?”

Suran nods, coughing. She turns to the side and spits out a mouthful of blood.

Everyone stares uneasily at it. 

“What about you guys?” Jimin asks.

Yoongi shakes his head. “If you want to break into your uncle’s mind, you’ll have to do it alone,” he says. He puts a hand on Jimin’s shoulder, curls it into the fabric of his parka. He looks him hard in the eye. “Only you can find out the truth about that will,” he says. “About your father.”

Jimin lets out a breath, but nods.

“Keep this live on you at all times,” Yoongi reaches out to tap his radio set. “We’ll cover you from up here. Let us know if there’s any trouble, yeah?” 

Jimin offers him a flash of a smile, looks at Suran. “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

ROOM 313  
**TOKYO, JAPAN**

Namjoon looks up when the room shakes, busy locking the door behind him, turning down the hallway when the elevator opens and one of Jimin’s projections steps out. _Distract_ , he thinks tightly to himself. _Distract._

He might not be the most imaginative dreamer, but Namjoon’s practical; he knows what to do, pulling a gun out from his waistband.

The hotel shudders, again.

He flicks the safety off.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

NEW YORK CITY  
**NEW YORK**

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ,” Jeongguk swears, when a motorcycle cuts through the traffic and someone shoves a grenade launcher through the recently shattered window. He fumbles blindly with the wheel, trying not to crash the van against the nearest lightpost while somehow dragging the projection out of his seat and dropping him in the middle of the road as the car veers, sharp, to one side. 

Jeongguk conjures up a gun and knocks a second rider out, cursing when he almost misses the turn that goes up to the bridge. An SUV comes out of nowhere, slamming hard into the side of the van, skidding across wet cement. 

He fights with an uncooperative wheel for a harrowing minute, swerving in between lanes and cars and dark-suited projections, the left side of the car running hard along the barrier of the freeway. 

There’s the sound of crunching glass.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Jimin’s projections are quick with the punches, but Namjoon is too.

The hotel jerks under their feet, and he sucks in a breath — thoughts flashing to Jeongguk and that beat up van, legs sliding out underneath him as the world shifts, and then shifts again.

_What the fuck,_ he thinks, straining for the floor. 

They fight messy for the gun. It’s less finesse and more of a squabble against expensive carpeting and pretty wallpaper, the hallway shifting too fast for them to get more than a few good punches in before the entire hallway tilts again.

They end up making a wild crawl down the corridor, scrabbling for control.

Another flip, and then Namjoon’s sliding feet first into one of the hotel rooms. His weight is enough to force the door open under him, papers fly off the desk, the two of them wrestling along the length of the bedroom, a tangle of legs and arms and not much else. 

Namjoon’s jacket gets caught above his shoulders when he smashes a telephone receiver into the projection’s face, and he uses the change in gravity to send him flying over his head. He hits the ceiling with a satisfying noise. 

The room swings them around, and out of sheer miracle, Namjoon’s fingers close around the barrel of his Glock, flipping it around so it sits right in his hands, so that he can feel the swoop of his throat in free fall and curl his finger around the trigger without even checking to see if the safety’s off and right as he’s about to hit the bathroom door and the chamber’s almost empty, he can tell, but he’s got no time and no energy to spare and between one breath and the next, he shoots.

The guard crumples.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

_I’ve been a good person,_ Jeongguk thinks, listening to the van get absolutely decimated by an automatic, bullets pinging off the rear bumper as he crawls along the floor of the vehicle. _Okay, maybe not entirely a good person,_ he amends, straining for the MP3 player and shoving a pair of headphones haphazardly over Namjoon’s ears. But a good enough person to warrant getting out of this alive, he hopes.

The gunfire’s getting worse. Jeongguk’s afraid one or ten of the bullets are going to end up in his head and then he’ll have to deal with the terrifying possibility of being trapped in limbo for the rest of his life, but. Whatever.

“I hope you’re ready,” he says, glancing out the window. “I’m really sorry, Namjoon.”

He gives them as much time as he can — another ten seconds. Then he presses play.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Nina Simone starts crooning, low.

Namjoon’s head snaps up from where he’s on the stairwell, having just disposed of another security guard. 

“No,” he says, taking the fast route up from the stairwell he’d just been in. “No, _no_ — it’s too soon.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

TITLIS, BERNESE ALPS  
**SWITZERLAND**

“Min, do you hear that?” Seokjin says over the comms. He’s currently hanging off the side of a mountain.

Yoongi looks up. “Yeah,” he says, hesitantly. “Yeah, it sounds like—”

Music. 

“I started twenty minutes ago, I think. I thought it was just the wind at first.” 

“Fuck,” Yoongi says. “Shin,” he says, pulling his mic up close to his mouth, shoving goggles off his face. “Shin, do you copy?”

“Copy. We’re going as fast as we can,” she says, breathless. “How long do we have?” 

“Jeongguk’s got about ten seconds before the jump,” Yoongi says, looking at Taehyung for help. 

“That gives Namjoon around three minutes,” Taehyung says. “Gives us about an hour.” 

“Can we make the route in under sixty minutes?” she asks, grunting as she hauls herself over another outcropping.

“I don’t think so,” Taehyung says, shaking his head. “You’ve still got to climb down the middle terrace, and then get through the maze.” 

Yoongi swears, squeezing his eyes shut. “They need a new route,” he decides. “Seokjin, did you add anything in there?”

He’s met with silence.

Seokjin doesn’t reply because Seokjin can’t reply, too busy slaloming down the mountain-face with a group of gun-wielding, incredibly murderous projections on his ass.

“Taehyung, did he add anything in there?”

Taehyung looks back at Yoongi, wide eyed, shaking his head. “I don’t think I should tell you,” he says, crossing his arms. “What if Hoseok finds out?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Yoongi hisses. “Did he build any access routes to cut through the maze or not?” 

They listen to the warping melody of _Feeling Good_ curling through the air.

Taehyung turns his head to the side, jaw working. “An air duct,” he says tightly. He looks at Yoongi. “He added an air duct system that’ll take them right to the strongroom.” 

“Okay,” he says, harsh. “Explain it to them.”

Taehyung sucks in a breath, he grabs his mic. 

“ _Shin—_ ”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

The gunfire gets worse. Jeongguk wishes he had some kind of helmet on right now, crawling around on the floor before he jumps so hard into the driver’s seat that the entire car bounces with it. He doesn’t have time to see where the shooter is, doesn’t have time to do anything except slam hard into reverse, breathing hard. 

Bullets. Singing. The sound of squealing metal, shattered glass. The lurching swoop of his stomach as the first two wheels roll out into nothing but open air.

The van breaks through the barrier of the bridge. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my heart has been feeling tired lately. have another chapter tho
> 
>  **recommended soundtrack:**  
>  -[old souls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V1cO9LFULw)  
> -[528491](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX7yOVVr_d0)


	3. the inception

For a long while, there’s nothing but silence. The wind howls, and the trees bend, but the fortress still stands, cold and dark, in the distance.

Namjoon swings wildly towards a sconce. He fumbles the keycard out of his pocket and pushes into the hotel room when he slow himself down, sighing when he sees the mess anti-grav’s made of his team. Still asleep.

He checks his watch.

“How do I drop you,” he mutters, staring at the loose telephone wires, the receiver that’s been separated from it’s cradle. “Without gravity?” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Suran’s pace is flagging. 

Jimin has to drag her up to the exhaust grate, has to pull the pin from the grenade with his own teeth, blow the cover off and haul her five feet up by toppling his body weight back through the pipe, slinging her arm around his shoulder and pushing through. 

She’s pale, not cold pale: sick pale. Suran coughs and coughs and coughs, spitting blood everywhere.

“Go,” she rasps, teeth laced with it. “I’ll follow.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Yoongi shoots projection after projection, cursing under his breath when the last one doges his bullet. He turns and beckons Taehyung in, though, pointing to the window. “That’s the antechamber to the strongroom,” he says. “You think they’ll make it before the second drop?” 

“Fifteen minutes until the car hits the water,” Taehyung says. “Jimin said they’re already there.” 

Yoongi nods, grim. “Let’s just hope he likes what he finds.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Seokjin hates being distraction. He hates it with a passion, hates it with every fiber of his being. He was probably born hating it too, he muses, speeding down the fucking Alps in a stolen sled, chasing soldiers away from whatever bullshit situation’s going on down by the fortress.

Yoongi said Seokjin needed to draw their attention, so he’d taken out four of their men turkey style — back to front — before the captain noticed something was wrong and turned around to bark orders at them and found nothing but the butt of his rifle instead. 

“I’m heading towards the building now,” Seokjin says into his mic, driving hard. “Shin, Park, do you copy?” 

“Loud and clear,” Jimin says. “We’re approaching the strongroom, over.” 

“I’ve got eyes on you, over,” Taehyung says, leaning down over the console next to Yoongi. He sees the small figure of Jimin crawling from the grate, some length of white that must be part of Suran’s uniform lagging half a beat behind. 

Jimin straightens up cautiously into the room, just visible from the corridor windows. He’s moving slowly. 

Then: patterned camo. 

“Shit,” Yoongi swears, “There’s someone else in there.”

“ _Jimin_ ,” Taehyung says. “Get out of there. It’s a trap—”

The figure’s hidden behind a pillar for a long while, idling as Jimin inches forward on careful feet. It’s crown of dark hair and nothing else distinguishable except for the way he moves, there shouldn’t be a difference between this projection and the next, but Yoongi _knows_ those shoulders, that body. He knows the fingers resting against their thigh, twitching towards the holster there.

“Come on,” Yoongi mutters, lining his sights up on the projection just behind Jimin. “A little lower—”

Another step.

Jimin sees the hospital room the minute Hoseok turns to smile up at Yoongi. 

He freezes.

“Jimin,” Taehyung leans down to his mic again, desperate. “Jimin, _please_ , behind you—”

“Hello,” Hoseok says, demure, eyes curling up into a pretty smile. 

“He’s not real!” Taehyung yells, shaking Yoongi hard. “Min!” 

Yoongi blinks, starting to come back to himself. “I…” he says faintly, hands shaking as he leans down again.

 Hoseok pulls out a gun. Browning, 9mm.

_“Jimin!”_

Hoseok shoots him point blank in the chest.

Yoongi pulls the trigger out of reflex alone.

The rifle’s bullet goes clean through Hoseok’s head, and he crumples to the ground, hair splayed out around his face like a halo, the blood seeping into the cement and snow around his body. 

“Seokjin?” Taehyung yells, yanking the mic to his mouth. “Get the anteroom now. Jimin’s down!” 

“Copy that,” he says, grunting as he climbs up into the exhaust vent. “I’m on my way.” 

Suran, hearing the gunshot, drags herself up through the open grate to find Jimin collapsed on the floor. She groans, hissing painfully through her teeth as she drags a gun from her belt, only making it halfway across the floor before Seokjin catches up with her.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, hauling her up so that she’s leaning against one of the big pillars. “Are you okay, Shin? Stay with me for a little bit longer, I need to,” he looks over at the defibrillator on the wall, smashes the glass with his fist and drags the bag out over the concrete to where Jimin lays, sprawled out inelegantly on the floor.

He’s ripped Jimin’s shirt apart, already finished with the electrodes, when Yoongi and Taehyung burst in from the upper deck.

“It’s no use,” is the first thing that comes out of Yoongi’s mouth.

“What?” Seokjin says, rounding on him.

“Hoseok killed him.” 

“I got that,” he says. “I’m asking if we just failed, Yoongi. Because if we did then this is it? It’s over now? Just like that?” 

Yoongi drops to his knees, over Jimin’s dead body, exhausted. “I’m sorry,” he rasps. “I couldn’t shoot him.”

Seokjin looks at him for a long minute, the back of his neck tense. Then he lets out a breath, slumping back onto his heels.

“Come here,” he sighs. He waits for Yoongi to realize he's being serious, reels him in until they're pressed flushed together: chest to chest. “I know,” pulls Yoongi’s head down to his shoulder. “You never could.” 

“No,” Taehyung says faintly, disbelieving. 

Yoongi looks up at him. “What?” 

His jaw is set, eyes hard. “No,” he says. 

“Taehyung—”

“I mean, there’s still a way to fix this,” Taehyung says. He looks at Jimin, bleeding out on the floor. “He’s trapped in limbo right now, yeah?”

Yoongi licks his lips, nodding reluctantly.

“So we can just follow him down there,” he says. “And save him that way.” 

“There won’t be enough time.” 

“There will,” Taehyung says again. “Down there,” he points to Jimin’s body, his slack lips, pink with heat. “ _There will be enough time,_ and as soon as we hear Namjoon’s music start, then Seokjin can use the defibrillator to revive him, and we give him his own kick down below—”

“But the hospital,” he says weakly. 

“We can be back before then,” he’s insistent. “When the music’s over we blow the entire thing to bits and ride all the kick back up all the layers; Min, there’s still a way, you can’t give up now.”

Seokjin looks to Jimin, then to Yoongi. Suran, where she’s propped up in the corner. 

“I can hold them off while Seokjin plants the charges,” she says.

“You’re not going to last,” Yoongi grits his teeth.

“We have to try,” Seokjin says, hand curling tight around his wrist. He reaches backwards and pulls the PASIV out of his bag, shoves it into Taehyung’s arms. “Go,” he says. “Go find Jimin.” 

“Hoseok’s going to be down there,” Taehyung says, when he’s pulled Yoongi over to the side. He clicks the case open with startling efficiency, stripping off his gloves with his teeth and spitting them out by his feet. He checks the Somnacin lines. “Can you trust you to do what’s needed?”

Yoongi looks up at him from where he’s searching for a vein. 

“We’ll need to find Hoseok anyway,” he says, expression unreadable. “He’ll have Jimin.” 

Taehyung falters. “How do you know?”

Yoongi slips the needle into his skin. “Because,” he says quietly. “He wants me down there with him.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Namjoon’s arranged his team into neat little rows, heads to feet to feet to heads, tied them together with telephone wire and carted them through to the waiting elevator. 

He grunts, pushing off one of the walls to open the ceiling tiles, explosives bouncing around in his pockets as he clamps one down between his teeth and starts setting them up on the outside, flicking the timers on as he sets off the first round.

It gets them started, rattling down towards the end of the elevator shaft. 

Namjoon crawls back in, holds tight to the handrail as he curls up in the corner and counts down, almost obsessively, under his breath, hoping the headphones he’s shoved haphazardly over Seokjin’s ears aren’t going to come off once he really starts going. 

Twelve. Eleven. Ten. 

He curls up into himself. Presses play.

_Birds flying high, you know how I feel—_

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

**LIMBO**

Taehyung coughs up a mouthful of saltwater and gasps, full throated and aching, somehow dragging his exhausted body up the beach and into Yoongi’s arms. He’s soaking wet, and wearing jeans, shoes slopping water as they stumble up to the shore, the sky a dark sling of gray.

“This is your world?” Taehyung gasps, breathing hard.

Yoongi looks everywhere but at him. “It was,” he says. He takes them up a set of stairs, then down a winding street.

Taehyung looks up at the city. It really is a blend of everything: the streamlined neatness of Tokyo, of Seoul, the old face of Paris built into the outcroppings of great buildings. Hoseok and Yoongi, architects of legend. “You built this?” he asks. 

“We both did.” 

Taehyung puts one foot in front of the other. “It’s beautiful,” he murmurs. 

Yoongi doesn’t reply.

They walk for a while, briskly, wind chafing their skin.

Then: “This is our neighborhood,” he says, out of nowhere, pointing down a street corner. 

Taehyung’s eyebrows go up.

“Our first apartment together,” Yoongi continues, leading them through a city square. The building’s spiderwebbed with age, and cracking apart at the corners. “We moved to this house when Dawon got pregnant. The next one after that.” 

“Are these…” Taehyung stutters, stumbling over his feet. “You started creating all this from memories alone?”

Yoongi huffs, looks down. “Yeah,” he says. “We had time.” 

“But Hoseok—” 

Yoongi shakes his head. “No,” he says. “He’ll be here.” 

It’s another minute before he pushes open the doors to the lobby of an apartment complex. It’s luxurious: marble floors, high ceilings. Most of the walls are glass, and even the elevator ride is impossibly smooth up to the top floor. 

It stops gently, the doors sliding open without trouble. 

Yoongi steps out, sure-footed. 

“How do we send Jimin back?” Taehyung asks, following nervously. 

Yoongi cocks his gun. “We improvise.” 

He pushes through to the living room. 

“Min Yoongi,” Hoseok says, not a second before they step through the door. He’s turning a butcher knife in his hands, over and over, running his finger along the length of the blade. “Tell me,” he looks up. “How does it feel to be home?”

Taehyung stops in the doorway. Watches Yoongi keep going. Watches him walk and walk and walk until he’s standing right next to the dining room table, hooks a familiar ankle around the chair leg, pulls it out, sits down like all his bones are hurting. 

“You know this isn’t my home.”

Hoseok looks back at him, bored. “Do you really believe in your world so completely?” he asks.

His expression is pitying. Yoongi’s, when Taehyung dares to look, is terrible. 

(He’s wearing his wedding band again.)

“Admit it, sweetheart,” Hoseok says, mocking. "Just one reality isn't good enough for you anymore."

Yoongi breathes out, very carefully.

“So choose,” Hoseok whispers, affecting kindness. “Like I did,” he leans in, presses their foreheads together, eyes squeezed shut. “Choose this. Choose me.” 

Yoongi is silent for a long minute. The line of his shoulders is tense, fingers curling into a fist in the tabletop as he does nothing but breathe — shallow, short things through his close-lipped mouth. “Hope-ah,” he rasps eventually.

He pulls away.

"I can't."

Hoseok shakes his head. “What are you talking about?” he says sharply.

“People are waiting for me up above.” 

Hoseok laughs at that, a bright, cutting thing. “Up above?” he says. “Listen to yourself—”

“This isn’t real.”

“You keep saying that,” he bursts out, fingers curling over the rough oak. “But you don’t believe it, Yoongi, I can see it in your eyes.” 

Yoongi turns his face away.

“Always so sure of yourself,” Hoseok hisses, vicious. “But what if you’re wrong, huh? What if I’m the one who’s real?” he leans in, runs a hand over Yoongi’s cheek. “You keep telling yourself what you know, but what do you _feel?_ ” 

“Stop,” he says, almost cutting him off, fingers curling around Hoseok’s wrist. “You know _what I feel._ ” He doesn’t pull Hoseok’s hand away from his face, just holds it there like it hurts to even breathe.

"What does that matter?" Hoseok asks.

They stare at each other for a long time.

"Because it means I can't let you go, and the guilt," his voice breaks.

Hoseok looks at him.

“The guilt,” Yoongi tries again, fraying at the edges.

Taehyung can't tear his eyes away, even when he watches their fingers slot easy together, familiar. 

“My regret," he licks his lips, looks down. "I have nightmares about it you know?" he says, shaking his head. "Should I have done it?" he asks, like he's begging for mercy. "Should I have done it?”

“Done what?” Hoseok rasps.

“You know what I'm talking about.” 

Hoseok pulls back, stung.

Taehyung sucks in a sharp breath. His foot skids out behind him on the hardwood.

Hoseok’s eyes flicker across the table top, to the flowers in the vase, to the light outside the window. “You were the one who poisoned my mind,” he says, the words fitting awful against his tongue. “Your own husband _—_ ”

“I was trying to save you.”

“You betrayed me!” 

“No—”

“I can give you an answer,” Hoseok says, around the tears. “Right here, Yoongi. You know you don’t have to leave.” 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Seokjin’s head jerks up to the sky when he hears the strain of violin floating in through the wind. He swears, swinging himself back up into the exhaust vent and crawling on all fours to Jimin, doubling checking the charges, then the electrodes, hands steady when he clears the defibrillator pads and rucks Jimin’s shirt up to his collarbones—

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Taehyung jumps as the sky cracks, a whip of lightning streaking down past the clouds. A building shatters in the distance. 

“Min,” he says, desperate. “We have to go!” 

Hoseok looks up at him, tear-stricken. “You can’t have him,” he shakes his head. 

Taehyung doesn’t ask which one of them he’s talking about.

Yoongi swallows. “If I stay here,” he says, eyes flicking up to Hoseok’s face. “Will you let Jimin go?” 

“What are you talking about?” Taehyung rasps. “Min, you can’t—”

Yoongi laces their fingers together, brings Hoseok’s hand up to his lips. He stares at him a second too long, but finally nods, slow.

“He’s on the porch,” Hoseok says, without taking his eyes off of Yoongi’s. 

“Taehyung—”

“You can’t just do this!” 

“Go check if he’s alive,” Yoongi says.

He doesn’t move.

“Taehyung,” he says, hard. _“Go check if he’s alive.”_

He swears, loudly, but turns on his heel anyway, running to the side door and kicking it open, dropping to his knees when he sees Jimin trussed up like a pig. He rips the gag from his mouth, undoes the handcuffs, pushing him upright so he can lean on Taehyung’s shoulder, shuddering with fear.

“Are you alright?” he asks. “Are you alright?” 

Jimin nods, eyes unfocused.

Hoseok still hasn’t looked away from Yoongi.

“Take him and go!” Yoongi shouts, curling their fingers together. 

“I’m not just going to leave you here!” Taehyung yells, straining to be heard over the storm, the debris that crashes into the side of the apartment building, shattering like explosives as the wind picks up. “You can’t stay with here to be with him!” 

Yoongi shakes his head, slowly at first.

“I’m not,” he says quietly.

His eyes flick up to Hoseok’s.

“Min—”

“I can’t stay here anymore because,” he swallows. “Because he isn’t real.”

Hoseok laughs, a terrible, grating sound.

“Don’t lie to yourself,” he scoffs. “I’m the only thing that’s real.”

Yoongi pulls back, shaking his head. “Oh,” he breathes. “I wish,” he says, thinking about Suran, who he knows is already dead. He thinks about the years they’d spent, alone in this house with nothing but the waif of projections for company. How it felt to grow old. The emptiness of their home in Seoul.

“I wish more than anything,” he says, sadly. “But you’re just a shade of my real husband,” he says, pulling away. “Because I could never dream him up with all his complexities. All his beauty.” 

Hoseok stares and stares, fingers curling hard around his carving knife. 

“Min!” 

“Just go!” he yells, even as Hoseok falls on him, screaming, wild. 

“Does this feel real to you, Yoongi?” Hoseok snarls, sinking the blade into his stomach. “Does it?!”

“ _Min!_ ” 

A gunshot. Hoseok, tumbling off his chair, hitting the floor. 

_“What are you doing?”_ Yoongi yells, almost collapsing when he scrambles to his feet. 

Taehyung drops the Glock.

“Improvising,” he gasps, kicking Jimin off the balcony without even a backwards glance.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Seokjin’s on his third round when Jimin bursts awake, gasping. “In there now!” he shouts, pointing to the last room. “Go, go, go!” 

Jimin stumbles to his feet, almost crashing to his knees before his legs start working again, fingers shaking as he types 061313 into the scrolling keypad, the locks sliding down, the doors rolling open to stare down at the figure of his dying father, nothing but skin and bones under the pristine sheets of a hospital bed.

“Appa,” he whispers.

He’s started crying, but doesn’t realize until he reaches a hand up to touch the skin of his cheeks, he feels the wetness sitting there like a second home. “Appa,” he says again. Sees his mouth working around the sound of—

“Disa—disa—”

Jimin drops to his knees by the bed. “I know,” he says, ragged. “I know you’re disappointed that I couldn’t be you.” 

Park, with some effort, shakes his head. His eyes are wide with desperation. “No,” he fumbles, frail. A tear rolls up towards his temple. His lip trembles. “Disappointed,” he whispers, trying for a smile. “Disappointed that you tried.” 

His father’s reaches out towards the cabinet by his bed, a hand brushing past his cheek, and Jimin turns to catch it only for Park to push him aside.

“What?” Jimin asks. He looks at his father, then back at the safe. “I—”

“Go,” Park whispers. “It’s yours.” 

He doesn’t understand, fully, what he means until he watches the door swing open and sees the will — thick — then: 

“ _Appa_ ,” his voice cracks. 

He reaches down to the second drawer, blinking hard around his tears. Pulls out the costume he’d worn when he was eight. The photo of him in the dressing room, framed. Recalls the moment with vivid clarity: waiting around after the show and watching his classmates leave with their parents, twisting his ankle round and round waiting for them to leave so he could find his chauffeur to go home to finish his lessons. How someone had said his name, and he’d looked up from his book into the face of his father, carrying a bouquet of flowers almost taller than Jimin was.

He'd let Jimin run into his arms and bury his face in his neck and cry in the dressing room, and promised that he was proud.

Jimin looks up to his father’s face, now. 

Dead. 

“No,” he says, dropping the costume, almost climbing into the bed. “Appa,” he gasps, cradling his thin face in both hands. “No, _no, appa_ —”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

Jimin gasps, choking, as he comes alive in a hotel elevator. 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

There are many things that Yoongi knows about Hoseok. 

The way he danced around the kitchen humming tunelessly to the radio when he cooked, sliding a cup of coffee across the counter when Yoongi finally dragged himself out of bed. The way he folded his shirts. How he smiled, leaning in for a kiss. How it felt to look up and find him looking back. 

His pink cheeks, his candy mouth.

“Do you remember,” Hoseok says now, blood in his mouth, on his shirt. He’s pale and veined, skin blotchy with the tears, hair a mess, but Yoongi think he’s never looked better. It feels like forever. “When you asked me to marry you?”

Yoongi’s lips thin, trembling. “Yes,” he says, leaning down to press their foreheads together, shaking too much for anything else. “It came to me in a dream, you know,” he rasps, tucking Hoseok’s hair behind his ear. 

“You said we’d grow old together.” 

Yoongi cups his face, pulls him tighter to his chest. “But we did,” he whispers. Even if it wasn’t reality, he’ll take anything. “But we did, don’t you remember?” 

Fifty years in limbo, nothing but each other. Their feet lined up like matchsticks on the balcony ledge.

Hoseok coughs, fingers curling in the hem of Yoongi’s shirt. “Stupid,” he grins, faint. It hurts him too. “‘Course I do.” 

“Hope-ah,” he chokes out. He’s crying hard now, tears blurring his vision. Yoongi looks down at him, flesh and bone, for the last time. No graveyards here, nothing cold. “I miss you so much.”

And here’s the thing: he needs to get it right, now, because he’s not getting any more second chances. He needs to get it right because he’s never going to see him again. “Don’t be sad for me, sweetheart, please,” he says, because Yoongi will always know Hoseok — the real Hoseok, the true Hoseok — better than anyone else. “We had our time together, right?” 

Yoongi’s voice is thick with the years. The loss.

“But I have to let you go now,” Yoongi rasps, carding his hand through his hair. His voice drops to a whisper, too strained for anything else. “I have to let you go.”

And for a moment, in the blind haze of hurt, Hoseok reaches out to pull Yoongi into a kiss. It’s barely a press of their lips together, but it’s kind in the way the broken memories never were, Yoongi gasping into his mouth and crying with it.

“My brave boy,” Hoseok murmurs, when they pull apart. He reaches up to brush the tears from Yoongi’s eyes with the back of his hand, even with his lips purpling, breath coming in bursts. “Of course you do.” 

He swears he’ll never forget what they’re like now, in all the small things: Hoseok’s smile, the shape of his spine. His wedding band is cold against Yoongi’s skin, and he allows his hand to curl around Hoseok’s for a brief, aching moment.

“I loved you,” his voice breaking. “ _God_ — Jung Hoseok I loved you so much.” 

He looks at Yoongi, soft everywhere the light curves. “I know,” Hoseok murmurs. He brushes hair behind Yoongi’s ear. He’s still watching, gently. The way only he’s ever watched Yoongi: in the stolen moments, when nobody else had been looking, and it was just the two of them against the world.

The building’s starting to crumble, the floor breaking apart under their twilight bodies.

The sun’s setting far over the horizon. 

Yoongi looks out the windows, and sees their Paris, their New York, the dreamy skies and the balconies.

The wind is strong, and he has to lean down to hear what Hoseok’s trying to say, the words he didn’t get last time. Hoseok surprises him, though, and kisses Yoongi’s forehead instead, then the shell of his ear, the corner of his mouth.

“Min Yoongi,” he says, refusing to look away. Hoseok’s breathing slows, lips curled beautifully upward. “I love you too.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

NEW YORK CITY  
**NEW YORK**

Namjoon wakes to a mouthful of seawater. 

He blinks, uncomprehending, for a long moment, before Taehyung unbuckles his seatbelt and shoves an oxygen tank at him, pushing the mouthpiece past his lips when Namjoon can’t do it himself.

“Let’s go,” Taehyung mouths at him, pointing at the door Jeongguk’s left open. 

By now, the van’s fully submerged, and Namjoon’s just turning to leave when he sees Suran — blood soaking her shirt — still asleep. Taehyung pushes hard at him to get them out the door, gasping when they break the surface.

“What happened?” Namjoon asks, struggling to breathe. Jeongguk pounds him a couple times on the back, and he doubles over on the rocks, coughing the water from his lungs.

“Min stayed,” Taehyung says. 

“With Hoseok?” 

He shakes his head. “No, to find Suran.” 

Jeongguk collapses against Namjoon’s shoulder, spent. It’s the only thing holding him up now, and Namjoon snakes his arm around his waist, staring out onto the opposite bank. They watch the rain hit the water like pearls. 

Still wearing Shihyuk’s skin, Seokjin lets Jimin haul both of them up to the street. He coughs, and slumps back on his ass, watching Jimin carefully as he shakes wet hair from his face, strips his suit off, crumpling it up on the ground next to him. 

“I’m sorry,” Seokjin says, when it’s clear Jimin’s not going to be the one to talk first. It’s hard to hear him where they’re sitting under the overpass, trucks and cars and motorcycles speeding past. The rain, too, like waves to waves.

Jimin shakes his head. “The will meant that father wanted me to be my own man,” he says, fingers curling over his thigh. “Not just to live for him,” he sighs, breath coming heavy.

He turns to look at Shihyuk, soaked to the bone. 

“So that’s what I’m going to do, samchon,” he says. “I’m going to build something for myself.” 

Seokjin casts his eye out over the surf. Thinking of everything ending.

“He’ll be lost,” Namjoon says. 

He looks at Taehyung. 

Taehyung looks back at him. 

“No,” Taehyung says, eventually, sounding terribly sure of himself. They watch the eggshell of their van sink into the water. “No, he won’t.”

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

The sun is hot. It must be late summer. He has the feeling that he's been here once before, a long time ago, with someone who held his hand and smiled like clouds coming down, but now he barely has enough energy to drag the pads of his fingers over the bruises on his cheeks.

He doesn’t know his name, just the exhaustion that numbs him down to the knees, and something gaping in his chest — reminding him of how much he is lost. That there’s something now that he has to find. 

His head aches, like a bruise. His chest even worse. 

He closes his eyes, and goes back to sleep. 

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

People are barking orders at each other when he wakes, but he doesn’t have the energy to parse the words, going limp and letting himself get hauled through corridors, through cars, through the elegant hallways of a building he swears he’s seen before, but. He doesn’t remember a life before this. Here. 

“He had nothing on him but a gun,” one of the guards are saying. A Browning, 9mm. A little waterlogged. “And this.” 

A music box, Clair de Lune carved across its tiny sides. The winding mechanism is jammed, and he doesn’t know how he knows this, or why his fingers itch to touch. _It’s important,_ something in him says. _But why?_

“Give him something to eat,” a voice says.

A bowl’s pushed in front of him less than a minute later. It’s nothing but stew and a thick, paddled spoon, but it warms him up from the outside in, and he draws it protectively to his chest to swallow it down with single-minded focus. He’s weak still. He doesn’t know why that fact makes him uncomfortable. 

“Are you here to kill me?” the voice says again. It’s soft around the edges, lilting with every word. Familiar.

He frowns, lifting his head from his bowl, to find himself staring into the face of an old woman. She’s sloe-eyed, with age and sleep. There are fine wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, as if she’s been frowning for many years, and her hair is silver-grey. It’s plaited neatly over one shoulder, and he entertains a strange thought about how it should be spilling loose around her shoulders instead. 

The old woman looks back at him. She must be nearing ninety, he thinks, sees it in the spotted, veined skin of her hands.

“I’ve been waiting for someone,” she murmurs.

Words come to his mouth, then. He doesn’t know who put them there. 

“Someone from a half-remembered dream…” he mutters, confused.

“So it is you, Min,” she says, leaning closer. If she still had the energy to, perhaps she’d laugh. It comes out as a broken wheeze instead, her hands curling around Yoongi’s totem almost protectively. “It’s not possible,” she shakes her head. “You and I were young together once, but…look at me now.” 

“An old woman,” he says, but the word is not cruel. “Filled with regret.” 

Her eyes drop. “Waiting to die alone, yes.”

“I,” Yoongi falters, blinking hard. He puts his spoon down against the side of his bowl, and the sound of porcelain against porcelain is the sharpest thing in the room. “I came back for you,” her name still slips his tongue. “To— to remind you of something you once knew.”

Suran picks up the music box, slots a trembling finger against the side, winds it five times, keeps winding, keeps winding.

“That this world is not real,” he continues.

Suran lets go. 

Clair de Lune, in full-bellied strings, almost as if the piano sits in the room between them. It sings past the first eight-count, fills the air with pause and echo and quiet, staticky silence. Like the first time Yoongi had heard it in Hoseok’s head, the sun coming up around them on a balcony in Paris. 

Suran’s brows pinch together, elegant even now. “We had an arrangement,” she says. “Didn’t we?” 

Yoongi feels the ghost of someone’s fingertips on the back of his neck. 

“You must have followed me down,” Suran says, a single tear hitting the surface of the fine, oak table. 

Yoongi looks up at her from where he’d been staring at Hoseok’s totem on the table. The piano plays and plays and plays. “Come back with me,” he whispers. “So we can be young together again,” he says.

Suran reaches slowly for the gun by her side. Hoseok’s Browning is dry; Yoongi doesn’t have to check the chamber to know.

He stares.

Suran hesitates, fitting the cold barrel of the gun to her temple.

She pulls the trigger.

 

**♔♖♕♖♔**

 

TERMINAL 8  
INCHEON INT’L AIRPORT  
**SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA**

“Hot towel, sir?” the flight attendant says.

Yoongi blinks awake, to the window shade that’s been pulled all the way up, light cutting painfully across his face. He stares up at her, uncomprehending, swallowing around a dry throat.

“We’ll be landing at Incheon shortly,” she asks, then, handing him a piece of paper. Blue, long. “Here’s your immigration form.”

Yoongi takes it with shaking fingers. 

The rest of the team’s already awake, all of it snapping back when Jimin get out of his seat to pull his bag out from the overhead, rummaging in the front pocket for a pen and then sitting back down.

Yoongi’s familiar, now, with dirty, disheveled, bleeding to death Jimin, but this version of him is the slicked-back one, perfectly done up hair, and his makeup untouched by ten hours of flight-time. Only his suit is wrinkled, just slightly, one long line from shoulder to shoulder. 

Taehyung’s looking at him, and Yoongi’s eyes flit from his face to Seokjin’s, who smiles at him gently. Namjoon can’t muster up anything except a nod. Jeongguk’s in the bathroom, he thinks, but Suran—

Yoongi’s breath catches painfully in his throat. 

Suran’s staring at him with dark eyes, unreadable. Yoongi stares back for so long he fear that she’s forgotten.

After a long minute, she pushes herself upright in the seat, reaching over to her bag and pulling out a satellite phone. She presses a button. Turns to the window so he can’t read her lips. 

The flight arrives at the gate twenty minutes late. 

He waits at the carousel even though he didn’t check any bags, but knows that Namjoon did, the same Namjoon who’s waiting to clear customs with Yoongi while pushing a trolley of suitcases, having lost a bet with Taehyung and Jeongguk back— back at the warehouse in Paris, oh _God_ , pretending as if he doesn’t know who Yoongi is.

“Next,” the officer calls. 

Yoongi’s legs are shaking when he steps up to the booth. 

He slides his passport under the glass partition. His immigration forms. 

“Are you here for business for pleasure?” the officer asks. He flips tonelessly through the visa pages — all old, all from his days with Hoseok when they were still traveling the world — before he gets to his ID page. “Min Yoongi?” 

“Yeah,” he rasps, and then coughs to clear his throat. “Sorry,” he says. “Long flight— I, uh,” he says. “A little bit of both, I hope.” 

The officer’s eyes flick up to his face. He puts the passport down to input something in his computer, keys clicking.

Yoongi can’t breathe. His stomach churns, sinks, arms going numb the longer he stands there with his bags slung over his shoulders and waits for something to happen. Police, maybe, showing up out of nowhere, but all he sees is the blinding sun coming in through the glass doors on the far end of the arrivals hall.

The officer rolls over one side of his desk, pulls out a heavy seal. Stamps Yoongi’s passport, right under his last flight to London with Hoseok. “Welcome home.” 

Namjoon catches his eye from the next booth over.

“Yeah,” Yoongi says weakly, clutching Hoseok’s totem in his pocket.

He thinks, inexplicably, of him, and of the wound that no longer festers in his chest. Part of it scabbed over, other pieces peeling, the skin already naming its new scars. Flesh and tendon and bone, growing home, all of Yoongi new by the end, but whole, at the very least.

Tears pool over the shell of his lips. 

The light comes through. 

And Clair de Lune curls out, gently between them, little moons in the space between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **END.**
> 
> **recommended soundtrack**  
>  -[time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgyShFzdB_Q)  
> -[clair de lune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nft7tiy5E-w)

**Author's Note:**

> lmk what you think of the casting!
> 
> [requests](http://thankyounamjoon.tumblr.com/ask)


End file.
